While You Were Out
by ashleysays
Summary: Sasusaku drabbles and oneshots of varying length. Mostly rated M. Lemons. please read and review. sakura X sasuke
1. movie night

While You Were Out

Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto. Masashi Kishimoto does

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><p>Movie Night<p>

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><p>It all began on that damn Friday night.<p>

"This could not possibly get any worse." Teme grumbled, slumping his head once again to the back of the dark purple couch. I didn't know what his problem was this time and I didn't wanna' ask. There was always something bothering this one. He looked like he would begin writing angst poetry at any given moment. "This is the fourth time this month." he growled onwards when I didn't say anything. I slurped my noodles, finding the broth to become very interesting, so I didn't have to be subjected to another glare.

My other teammate was in the kitchen. I guessed she was making her favorite brand of popcorn considering the buttery smell dancing into the living room.

"It makes Sakura-chan happy-" I started around the food in my mouth but stopped as I realized that he obviously didn't care whether it made said girl happy or not.

"Do you like this movie or something?..." The Bastard questioned on. I stuffed my mouth again to avoid answering but he just gave me a steady look. I would just have to answer and hope that the conversation would stop.

"It's not that bad..." I swallowed my ramen and vegetables loudly and grimaced. All the Teme did was stare disbelievingly with a raised brow. I could feel my face heat up in embarrassment. It was one thing to like a chick-flick, another to admitting to liking it. The only reason it was bearable was the fact that the actresses wore skimpy little outfits and talked in those foreign accents that no one around here had. He turned his dark head back to the front.

"Incredible." he said in a way that made it obvious that he didn't think it was particularly incredible at all. "Why do I hang out with you, Naruto-Dobe?" he asked. It didn't sound like he wanted an answer so I just slurped loudly on another mouth-full of noodles. Sakura-chan plopped onto the floor in front of the couch with a large bowl of her buttery goodness while she waited for the video to rewind fully. She was probably pretending not to hear the Teme's complaints. I would have been decked in the jaw for bad-mouthing her favorite movie. She never hit the Teme, the lucky prick. I tossed the Bastard a scowl for no apparent reason and he threw one back, his being more impressive than mine- though I would never admit to it.

"What are you two bickering about this time?" Sakura-chan asked, tossing a yellowed corn kernel into the air only for it to disappear into her mouth. I could hear it crunching against her teeth. Her head rested back on the seat between where the Teme and I sat.

"Sasuke-Teme thinks this movie is stupid." I exclaimed, earning another glare, only this time from the pinkette. She looked like she didn't trust for one minute that it was true. "Believe it!"

"Shut up, Naruto. What's the number one rule in my house?" she asked, dissecting my expression. "_Well_?" she pressed when I didn't answer.

"Don't dis the Spice Girls." I grumbled, shrinking more into my seat. Of course I would get in trouble for what the Teme said.

"Exactly! No blasphemy like that in this house while I'm being nice enough to throw our movie night here. Kami knows we wouldn't make it past the thresh-hold of empty ramen cups at your front door-"

"Hey! You know I'm saving those for a good reason, Sakura-chan. The old man at Ichiraku said I can have free ramen for a month if I can collect all of the different flavors..." I pouted unconvincingly.

"If you don't want to watch the movie, you can go home. Sasuke and I will do just fine on our own." There was that tone again. They've been talking like that to me for a while now; like she really did wish I would leave so that they could watch without me. Maybe she was angrier about my comment than she seemed.

The VCR stopped with a loud jolt, the word 'play' blinking on the blue screen. "Now," she started again. "Don't complain about the movie anymore before you jinx the band and they break up." she jeered, punching the play button on her small remote.

I could find better things to do on a Friday night than watch 'Spice World'. Teme was right, no matter how much I didn't want to admit it. It wasn't worth it. But, whatever made Sakura-chan happy made me happy.

The opening song began to play and I nudged the Teme, pointing to Ginger Spice's large 'assets'. All that got out of him was a smirk and an "Hn". They were no fun tonight.

I think I might have fallen asleep because I was woken up to the movie loudly ejecting itself after its end. "Sakura-chan..." I mumbled, rubbing my eyes to see that she wasn't in the living room anymore. Maybe she was in the restroom. "Hey, Teme-" I looked to my right but he wasn't anywhere either. I vaguely remember him leaving to go home after punching me not too nicely in the shoulder. It was bound to happen soon. He hated Sakura-chan's movie nights. We were both constantly subjected to 'movie torture', as Kakashi-sensei had once put it. He used to join us but found something else to do after a while.

I grabbed my empty bowl from earlier and gingerly lifted off the couch. Sakura-chan would kill me if I left another bowl lying around her house. I was on my way to the kitchen to throw it away when I heard something peculiar. So, I decided to tip-toe to the edge of the hallway for a better listening distance.

It was a hushed voice that sounded a lot like Sakura-chan's. I crept a little closer to hear better.

"No, Ino, it's not like that at all..." There was a muffled voice from the other side of a phone. I couldn't hear what it was saying but I wasn't gonna' travel any closer to Sakura-chan's room in fear of being caught and strung up. "Sure, sure." She said. It was the kind of thing she would always say when she was 'exasperated'.

"Well, I can tell you one thing. I've become a _lot_ more flexible .." Muffled laughter…that was muffled laughter fore sure. "Yes, Ino-pig, of course we're using protection! Do you think I'm an idiot...don't answer that..." There was yelling on the other line from Ino.

I could agree. I also hoped Sakura-chan was using protection. Training can get rough without it. I was living proof to that fact.

"Fine, go ahead and hang up!" A pregnant pause. "Oh! Alright, we can go to that new store Kakashi-sensei told me about!"

I decided to leave and took a step back onto the creaky floorboards and cringed at the loud noise. This was obviously not the kind of thing I was supposed to hear. There was silence on the other side of the door until it flew open and a disgruntled Sakura-chan sped out almost bonking heads with me.

"Naruto! Were you eaves-dropping?" She thundered.

"O-of course not, Sakura-chan! Believe it! I wasn't droppin' no eaves anywhere!" I sputtered, searching for something to say. I was definitely strung up now!

"What were you doing then? This is a private conversation." she glared, most likely deciding not to believe me before I even said anything.

"I was just coming to tell you that I was leaving. Sasuke-teme already left too." She looked over my shoulder and bit her lip, looking a bit disappointed. Maybe she was sad that she didn't get to see the end of the movie. It was her favorite part after all. "I'll see you next Friday for movie night again, Sakura-chan." I said, trying to take advantage of her distraction to make a clean get-a-way. She just nodded and went back into her room, closing the door quietly.

"Alright, Ino, I'm back." she said into the phone. I hurled around and fled home.

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><p>The next Friday, Sasuke's mood hadn't changed much. If anything, it was worse. He refused to look at the television for even a moment. He rolled his eyes every time Sakura-chan cooed or 'awwwed' at the screen. He sighed a lot, looking as though he was annoyed with how much sighing there was to be done. The movie this time was 'Homeward Bound'...yeah. Sakura-chan had a knack for sappy flicks and subjected us once again to some 'movie torture'. Did she think we didn't get enough last time?<p>

"Sasuke-kun." Sakura-chan pulled her eyes away from the screen for the first time that night. "If you don't like the movies, why do you bother coming at all?" she turned back to the screen and 'awwwed' once again.

"Hn." the Teme sighed some more. "I'm sure we could find something more useful to do." he smirked. It was that damn tone again. I was sure of it. It was like they wished I wasn't there and there was some joke I didn't get or something, but I let it go. They were both acting strange. If they wanted to be weirdoes, that was their problem.

At least, that's what I told myself until I caught Sasuke-teme doing something I had never seen him do before.

I glanced over to see if he was still stubbornly _not_ looking at the screen, which he was, and caught him. His head was tilted to the side and he was concentrating really hard on Sakura-chan's bottom area as she relaxed on her stomach, twiddling her legs in the air, and watching the animals on the television. I opened my mouth to say something when he turned to look at me. He didn't say anything but he gave me that blank look again like I shouldn't be there. Then he clicked his tongue in aggravation and resumed looking anywhere but at the screen.

If they were gonna' keep looking at me like that, why did they keep inviting me over in the first place? I didn't know what to say, so I told Sakura-chan I was feeling under the weather and went home.

It was Wednesday and training started first thing in the morning. I arrived at the grounds to find Sakura-chan glaring down Sasuke-teme quite impressively. They whispered in harsh voices and kept their arms crossed in ways that looked nothing less than defensive. When I approached, they swiftly stepped apart like they were embarrassed at being caught doing something they weren't supposed to be doing. I turned to Kakashi-sensei to ask what was up with them but he just shook his head slowly with a thrilling note of, "Isn't it obvious?"

It obviously _wasn't_ obvious if I needed to ask, now, was it? I was becoming frustrated. If the Teme was making Sakura-chan mad I would have to deck him. But, Sakura-chan could just as easily have done that herself... Maybe I just misunderstood what I saw. It's happened a lot before and I didn't want Tsunade-baachan to yell at me again for jumping to raucous conclusions. I still had a healing scar from our last encounter.

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><p>When people say, "things could be worse", they mean what happened the following Monday.<p>

It was the Valentine's Day festival and Sasuke was proving to be particularly hard to persuade out of his house. "Why should I?" was his question.

"I've been explaining that to you for that last hour, Teme! You _were_ ignoring me, after all!" His raven head looked back to his scrolls with a disparaging expression. Kakashi sensei was waiting outside for me to haul the prick out, chuckling over our conversation.

"I'll go for an hour, Dobe, if you leave me alo-" was all I allowed out before I grabbed his collar and threw him into his room to dress. "I have shit to do, Dobe. I can't keep playing around with you like this. There's a mission that needs briefing…" he trailed. His voice was muffled from behind the door and I could hear closet doors opening and closing along with running water. I hoped he was washing that pretty little mug of his.

He entered the living room again a little later in his attire. It was generally the same as his ANBU uniform, but a slight bit more clipped. Mine was the same. Neither of us found a reason to dress up for such a stupid holiday. The only reason I attended the festival with the Teme was to see the girls all dressed up in their little Kimono and dresses. I smiled at the thought. Hinata-chan was sure to look the cutest….

"Dobe…" Sasuke called me to attention. Sakura-chan was approaching with Ino and hadn't noticed us yet.

"Sakura-chaaaan!" I yelled and threw my arms up in case she couldn't see us through the crowds. She didn't seem as happy to see us as I thought she would (or, one of us, I should say). The first thing she did was cringe and huff something to Ino that had her glaring at the Teme with equal scariness.

"Wow, Sakura-chan! You look great!" I decided to compliment her, nudging the Teme in the ribs with my elbow.

"Hn."

Sakura-chan glared at him again, Ino scoffed and walked away with a snooty expression, and Kakashi sensei continued to read his dirty novel.

"Uuuuh." I scratched my head. "So, Sakura-chan, where did you get that dress? It's really pretty…" I tried to start conversation, which got me a glare from Teme. Sakura-chan sure was being prissy lately. I immediately believed it to be PMS.

Sakura-chan brightened up immediately when she looked my way, pissing off the Uchiha next to me. "From the store Kakashi-sensei told me about. Ino and I went together after I told her about it over the phone." She linked arms with me; something she had never done before. "I figured I'd try and look good. Maybe I can attract a boyfriend that's not a complete and total bastar-" she was pulled away from me before she finished whatever it was she was talking about.

"I need to talk to you." Teme basically snarled, dragging her down an alley leading to the quiet training grounds to my left. Things were definitely backwards.

"What's up with them?" I asked the silver haired Jonin again.

"You really are a numbskull, aren't you?" he asked before leaving. Of course Kakashi sensei would say something that didn't even make any sense. "Cryptic bastard…"

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><p>I left early from Ichiraku to Teme's house the next morning. I probably knocked for about ten minutes before deciding that it wasn't worth my time and heading towards Sakura-chan's apartment instead. She had been complaining lately that she didn't get enough training with all the hours she worked at the hospital. She had been falling behind on our missions together and Sakura-chan had always been neurotic about being seen as a burden to others. Maybe <em>she<em> would train with me….

I climbed up the fire escape and through the guest room window silently, making sure not to wake any neighbors. Sakura-chan had given me a key a couple weeks ago, but I ended up misplacing it that same week. I didn't want her knowing that, so whenever I came over I came through that very same window. I had mastered maneuvering through her house as silently as a snail. I knew every creaking floorboard and every possible place that I could accidently bump a toe in the night. I had done this many times to sleep in that room when I lost my own house key, Sakura-chan being none the wiser.

I smiled to myself at the very sly-ness of it. I would just pretend that I unlocked the door and wake her up to train with m-

"Mnnn…."

My smile fell. Had I woke her up? Shit! I would have to kiss my neck goodbye for sure!

A bump; something hit the wall.

A burglar? Or Sakura-chan rearranging things? I left through the open door to journey down the hall. It seemed familiar and reminded me of my eavesdropping on movie night. I stopped three feet from her open door and flattened myself against the wall, trying to make myself smaller in case of being sighted.

Another bump and an accompanying crash.

"Shit…"

My eyes widened at the voice.

"Forget about it…" Sakura-chan whispered.

I peeked my head a little into the crack in the doorway. Why was he there? Sakura wouldn't need any help rearranging her furniture. She had "super-human" strength. It didn't make sense….

I could make out Sakura-chan's hair in the shadows, so I focused on that for a moment as I sank to my knees for a more comfortable stance. But, as soon as my eyes adjusted to the darkness of the room, it all clicked.

Sakura-chan's forehead was resting on her hands which were clinging to the white railing at the foot of her bed. Her mouth was slightly open, breathing deeply, eyebrows knit together. Her red chemise was unbuttoned, showing a sliver of cleavage, sheening with moisture.

The opening ended at the tight waist of the fabric just where her bust ended, the bow in the back was tangled and casted strangely as if it were trying to tie itself but utterly failed. Her thigh-high sock on her right leg was pushed down to the middle of her shin and the hem of her chemise was pushed up to the lower section of her back, clustering in ripples of silk.

It was the first time I had seen a woman's underwear before and Sakura's were the kind that was in those magazines with the exotic women. Her rear end was in the air and her back was arched to lift it higher than normal.

She removed one hand from the railing, still resting her forehead on the other, and grasped a hand from somewhere in the darkness behind her, placing it firmly on her left breast. I didn't notice the movement of something behind her until that moment, but I believe that I knew what it was, though I was still shocked and confused. I knew it, but I didn't want to. I could see it, but I didn't want to. And strangely yet…..I couldn't look away.

Sakura-chan moaned loudly as the hand began to knead her roughly and another hand harshly grasped her hip, guiding her rear end back and forth in a solid rhythm.

The hand left her breast and traveled slowly down her stomach and underneath her dress. It amazed me, though it shouldn't have. I shouldn't have been watching my teammate this way, but this realization still didn't move me from my rooted spot on the floor.

The bed was making small noises of protest as the rhythm at which she was being rocked became deeper and the hand from the darkness finally made it underneath her hem. Sakura-chan's grasp of the railing faltered and she rested her arm for support on the mattress, laying her forehead on her forearm instead for better leverage.

A deep, throaty moan came from the darkness behind her. "Mnnn. Faster…faster." She pleaded, harshly out of breath and muffled by the sheets her teeth were clamped upon. Her rear began to be pulled back at a quicker pace.

"Harder…" she moaned and once again the shadowed figure complied.

The hand between her thighs snaked its way around her waist and the hand on her hip tightened, crashing her repeatedly against itself.

"Ah….Please…oh G-" she cut herself off with a gasp of air and bit down on her forearm as the silhouette suddenly grasped her thigh lifting her ass so that her knees here an inch above the bedding.

Sakura-chan's moans became erratic along with the thrusts until her hands grasped the sheet- her knuckles were painted white and her hips and spine pulled taught and ceased to move. The man behind her leaned forward slightly, showing his grimacing face in the darkness. Sasuke-Teme's body went rigid with a guttural sound in the back of his throat only seconds after Sakura-chan had stopped. His grasp on her hips seemed bruising.

The two ceased to move in such ways and the bed stopped its protests. There was only harsh breathing in the silence.

I couldn't hold it in anymore. I leaped to the bathroom, throwing the door open, and spewed my ramen breakfast into the toilet, barely registering the noise of Sakura-chan hurriedly buttoning herself and running out the bedroom door; heavier footsteps behind her, but more lazy.

Before they could say anything I wiped my mouth and turned towards Sakura's unbelieving stare and Sasuke-Teme's uncaring one.

"It's about time you got the stick up your ass removed, Sakura-chan."


	2. snowpocalypse

Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto or make any profit from this story.

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><p>While you were out<br>"Snow-pocalypse"

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><p>What started as a light drizzle quickly shifted into a torrential downpour of snow and ice. We were caught in a literal tempest with no hopes of escape until the threshold of snow around the perimeter subsided.<p>

Kakashi-sensei was back in Konoha. He hadn't taken the mission with us on the excuse of training his new students, who were fresh out of the academy. Though, he would most likely ditch them as well and lock himself in his apartment. The poor Genin didn't know what they were getting themselves into with the lazy sap as their teacher.

Yamato-taichou was taking place as captain of team Kakashi for the first time in two years. This would have been all well and good if it weren't for the storm. We were stranded in Mist Country and it seemed as if our mission would not be accomplished after all. We had traveled for three days until now to intercept an official client on his way to General Azuki. It was believed that he had information that would prove useful for Tsunade-shishou when she began her and Suna's coup over Mist. With the whispers of war coming, we needed to be ready for an invasion. If an invasion was even on its way, that is.

Sakura was thankful for Yamato-taichou's presence, for if he wasn't there they would most likely have frozen overnight. He had used his famous Mokuton no jutsu to fortify a small, warm structure of thick wood and earth. It would be virtually invisible to any enemy ninja who were to pass by. It seemed that the entire structure was covered in snow. From an outside perspective, it would appear to be a large hill of thick ice. But she could almost say that she wished her old sensei was there as well. As it was, Yamato-taichou could keep them warm and lead the way just as well as Kakashi-sensei; but architecture and warmth weren't enough to keep this team together. He could not command the two other males on this team the way Kakashi-sensei had. Naruto was an idiot who could be manipulated into any argument at the drop of a hat, and Sasuke didn't respect anyone's authority besides Kakashi's and his own. As per usual, said two were bickering and starting fights with any given opportunity which caused Yamato-taichou to stress more than was already necessary.

The rosette woman would never have guessed their temporary Jonin leader was deathly afraid of blizzards. He would flinch at each crash of thunder and huddle closer to the fire the darker the sky became. In fact, he didn't seem all that thrilled to be in Hidden Mist territory in the first place. Perhaps it was a past experience that caused one of the most feared and revered Jonin in Konoha to be reduced into a dribbling puddle of tears over a little bit of snow. Well, a _lot_ of snow. But that was beside the point.

It seemed as if it was her job to keep things running smoothly for the night, or however long it took for the hail to cease. She could only hope that Naruto and Sasuke would listen to her long enough to not kill each other. She could tell the two's sanity would not last long together in a confined space.

Sakura gazed into the fire, extending her hands forward to keep the bitter cold from her fingers, and pondered how to calm everyone- especially Yamato-taichou.

The fire crackled and popped minutely, the heat encircling her hands. She gazed at her fingertips. The light from the fire had turned the ends of them red, almost as if they were translucent. She remembered when she used to take her small flashlight and stick it in her father's nose to see the same red, semi-transparency as a Genin. How immature she had been...

She doubted she could get Sasuke to listen to her, seeing as he still seemed to view her as she had been then, no matter how much she showed him of her changes. Naruto would be easy enough, but why would someone as multifaceted as the raven haired man take advice from someone as ambisinister as herself?

"Shut up! Sasuke-teme!" Naruto practically yelled, making Yamato-taichou flinch once more. He was always the thrawn one. Good thing there was no one to hear him for miles around their perimeter...

"Make me, Naruto-dobe." Sasuke replied challengingly in that infamous, monotonous, steely, _sultry_ voice of his... Sakura shook her head clear. Those kinds of thoughts were not for kunoichi on missions. 'Shinobi rule #25: A shinobi must never show emotion, no matter what the circumstances. Emotions are a weakness that serve only to cloud the shinobi's judgment,' Sakura thought idly. This rule was repeated in her mind so often... She had given up hope on the stoic man before he had even returned to Konoha after all those years. After all the pain he had caused those closest to him, she could not forgive him as easily as Naruto obviously had.

Furthermore, it seemed that the ones who loved him most were the ones who ultimately suffered in the end. He was a rock that they broke themselves against.

Sakura had become neurotic about not becoming like that again, though she couldn't deny to herself that the feelings she once held were still there- hidden beneath the other things that had taken its place in his absence. Underneath her new-found independence, strength, self-esteem, and fierce passion for those she had become near to, there was still that little Genin with a violent thirst for the cold man. But, now, they weren't infatuation. They were _wanting._

Whenever she was around him and was inanimate enough, her mind seemed to occupy itself by shoveling these feelings back to the forefront of her consciousness and sub-consciousness alike. Whenever she was away from him for some time after missions and training, however short that time was, she spent almost all of that time trying to bury it again in the same abused soil at the back of her mind. It felt like, directly after spending so much effort to organize all of it, he would show up and chaos would ensue inside her once again.

In a way so recurring that it was almost crude, he was constantly on her mind.

Sakura shook her head more wildly than before, remembering what she was supposed to be focused on. Naruto and Sasuke were still arguing over who could beat whom in a duel and Yamato-taichou was currently moved to the fetal-position, breathing deeply and slowly. Perhaps a drink would do some good. It would certainly calm the most highly strung of them. The four Jonin were so disparate it was a surprise to Sakura how they were considered by a vast majority of Konoha to be the best working team other than the Legendary Sannin. Which, everyone knows how that team ended up working out in the end...

The female Jonin rifled through her bag until she grasped what she had been searching for. The flames reflected in the chrome shell molded around the flask. It had been a present from Kakashi-sensei when she had turned eighteen a few weeks ago. She hadn't used it yet and it seemed a fitting time to break it in. Under regular conditions, she wouldn't think about bringing alcohol on a mission. This had been the exception. She knew there was to be snow in this region during the first few days of the month, though she would never had guessed at the heavy amount. She had underestimated the percentage of precipitation by a large sum. The only reason she packed the flask was because she had a little extra room in her duffel and a tiny amount of alcohol could keep her warm without affecting her accuracy on the battlefield. But, seeing how they were in a 'safe-house' for the night, boozing a little wouldn't hurt anyone.

It was up to her so stop the bickering before it became too out of hand. She had to give it a shot. She took a deep breath and tilted the flask back between her lips, taking in a few gulps. "Naruto," She captured his attention after calling his name a few times, getting louder with each repeat and interrupting his argument. He looked at her with a stupid expression. "Do you want some, too?" she asked, holding the chrome container out towards his person.

"Nah, Sakura-chan. Thanks though. The Dobe's getting on my nerves and I'm gonna' go to bed….." he glanced towards Yamato-taichou again. "Yamato-sensei, why don't you come too? You're stessin' me out, man…" he gently lifted up the older man and lead him away, gliding silently past Sakura and the black eyed Uchiha, to the separate rooms deeper in the wooden structure.

The silence was awkward, in her opinion. Sasuke was probably just peachy-keen in the pregnant quiet of the room. He was used to such things. The rosette haired woman nervously flung her arm towards him, holding the flask out in offering. He stared into the fire for a moment longer, and then seemed to decide to perceive what she was presenting him. He stared blankly in disinterest for a moment again then took the bottle from her, making sure not to touch her hand in the process. This was always the same. He barely ever made bodily contact with her of any sort unless it was to pull her out of the way of a kunai or explosion in battle. Even then, it was short and he would push her away almost immediately afterward.

Said man gulped down the strong liquid in the same fashion as Sakura had and stared back into the fire, stoic again. He handed it back to her, gazing at the frost covered window for fear of looking at her face. He never smiled anymore around her either.

When she was twelve, team seven had taken a mission to Mist territory. It was similar to this trip, but without the snow. They had been derailed that night and forced to camp in the woods. It was the first time she had built a fire before on her own. She had struggled with it at first, but got the hang of it in the end. Naruto and Sasuke had sat and watched, snickering to one another that she would never be able to do it. She proved them wrong. The fire had stood, bright and strong, that chilly night. She had protested loud and clear into the sky her happiness. "I make fire!" she had gestured stiffly with her fists towards the flames- using a perfect caveman voice and pounding on her chest like a boy. "Me! I make fai-ya! Ooh!" This had earned a hysterical Naruto and one elusive smile from the young Uchiha.

That was the first and only time he had smiled at her. It was in that moment that her infatuation turned into love. That one smile; she remembers it every time she builds a fire.

She wondered what to say. She wanted to ask him if he remembered that story as well, but decided not to waste his time with it. He most likely wouldn't recall such a thing and she didn't want to hear that something so mnemonic to her was so unimportant to him that he would cast it out of mind. _That was a very long time ago_, she thought to herself. _Of course he won't remember such a stupid thing. It's redundant for you to do such a thing as well…._

She looked to him but he was still staring into the fire once more. There was something about fires that seemed to captivate him. He would spend nights not sleeping at all; just staring into the dancing flames. She didn't know this until a mission together a month ago.

_Naruto and Kakashi were needed in Konoha, so Sasuke and Sakura were sent as a two-man squad to a small village in Suna. She had woken in the middle of the night and quietly left her tent to fetch a drink of water, only to find the Uchiha himself sitting stubbornly by the fire still. His face had been more relaxed than she had seen before- more peaceful. His black eyes reflected the light so well that she had stared until she felt awkward- and even then- she kept staring. His eyes were mirrors that night._

_He hadn't noticed her gaze until well after a shinobi of his caliber should have- he was so doused in whatever he had been thinking. He didn't say anything as he watched her fixed stare, and she didn't dare speak either. It was the first time she had welcomed the silence between them without intermission. His eyes were like intense pools of the blackest ink. They were tired, she noticed almost immediately. How long had it been since he last slept? How many nights of their mission had he sat by that fire until morning broke through the horizon? She asked him once and he just said, "It's dangerous out here at night. I'm keeping watch for enemy ninja." It had flattered her that he was staying up all night to keep her safe; it was the nicest thing he had ever said to her._

_She gave everything to him that night. Body and soul. Everything._

She chugged a few more gulps and winced as it slid down her throat. Or did she wince from the memory? She could still recall that night so vividly that it hurt. That night…only one month ago. It seemed like ages since. That was the only time he had touched her like that; the only time anyone had touched her like that. She felt deprived of something detrimental now. Ever since, he kept more space between them than necessary.

_He was hungry that night- needy, exhausted, frustrated. He had pushed her into her tent without concern in his roughness. He was not gentle. He was not loving. But she never protested in the slightest. She loved every minute of it. She could see in his eyes that ne needed it. He needed the instinctual, guttural lust to be fulfilled. She knew he wasn't lusting her….it was just who he was- she understood that. The man was a world-known criminal and lived on basic human needs for so long on the run from his captors. She couldn't expect him to return to Konoha as a regular ninja after so many years as an animal. He was a man, after all, and had needs- no matter how depraved or deprived._

_She had whimpered when his calloused hands had harshly molded her body, but if he noticed, he didn't pull back or lighten his grip. He pressed her against himself with such force that she thought she would shatter. He never kissed her, though she had tried. His hand constrained on the small of her back as he began to untie the sash around her waist and she had taken it as opportunity to lift her lips towards his, but he had evaded. Her body was crushed to his with rage, but he ducked from her waiting lips to her pulse with gentle fervor. The compare in contrast between his hands and mouth were so different, it confused her. She wouldn't decide whether he was enraged or passionate with her._

_But, still, she did not stop him._

_When he bit down so crudely onto her neck and shoulders she did not fight him. When he licked and kissed the mark away, she moaned sultry words into his shoulder. He had liked that. She could tell from his next actions. He had dropped her night-shorts away and prodded her ass, grinding her hips into his own as hard as he could. She found it so erotic; the look on his face. His grimace of pleasure could have killed her, her heart slammed in her chest from the thrill it gave. She was gasping for breath before her shirt was even removed. It hadn't taken much time before this, too, was gone. He had grasped the side of her neck, still creating the heavenly friction between their hips moving, and dragged his palm down coarsely until his hand clenched the front of her thin, silk shirt. He watched her face, his own stern, as he tore the fabric away with a quick tug that left welts from the resisting fabric._

_She would have cared if not for his keening ministrations. The friction between them was making her the needy one and she ground herself harder into him in time with his movements. He didn't like this as much as she had hoped. He wanted to be the one in control. He was not the kind of man to give back or let someone give to him. He took, plain and simple; and he took anything he wanted. After so long without a woman, he was in demand._

_To punish her, he had held her hips to his tightly to refuse any more movement. She groaned in resentment, earning growl and yank of her hair. His fist was buried so deep in her tresses and mouth nuzzled so breathily against her shoulder and neck that she couldn't think anymore. All that registered in her mind were his movements. She tried again to move herself against him, grabbing around his back and onto his shoulders for stability and aid, but his grip was too strong. She couldn't help but defy him when he would leave her burning in such a way. Another yank of hair and a downward spiral towards the ground._

_He had pushed her onto her elbows and knees on her sleeping bag, one hand restraining her wrists so she could not lift off of her elbows, the other grasping her hip in place. She didn't know what he was planning to do, but she found her immovability quite enjoyable. This was precisely concerning because she was intrigued by being dominated by him so thoroughly._

"_Should I tie you up and make you take it?" he whispered brutally into her ear, panting and grinding into her backside. "Or are you going to be a good girl?" His voice sent a slight tremor down her body with the sheer truth in his words and she shivered slightly, hoping he didn't notice, but his eyes missed nothing. He surprised her next._

_His expert hand snaked around her waist and his nimble fingers rubbed her through her panties. Her hips bucked in surprise and she gasped shortly in shock, not expecting the Uchiha to do such a thing. His hand tightened around her wrists. She felt a thrill through her at her vulnerable position. He was so much larger than her he seemed to loom over her body in a show of power. She had never been able to imagine Sasuke in such a way. To think of the man in heated throes seemed absurd. She would never have believed the man could get hard if the proof wasn't grinding slowly and roughly into her backside._

_She didn't know anything about sex or what they were doing, but he obviously did. Plus, she didn't know if he was being serious about tying her up, but it seemed a lot more pleasurable than being 'a good girl', as he put it._

_She ground back into him as hard as she could and waited for her punishment with a smirk, but all she acquired was the sound of his sharp intake of breath. She liked it even more than what his hands were doing….almost. She did it again and waited for another grading noise from the man's throat but the noise came as a whimper from her own as he bit down on her upper back and rubbed her faster. She hardly registered that the moans and pants she heard were from herself._

_She could feel his smirk against her back. He didn't kiss the marks away this time, but she didn't give a damn. What he was doing with his fingers was the single most amazing thing she had ever experienced in her life. But, it ended all too soon when he removed his hands from her wrists and core to her hips and thighs. He pulled her knees out from under her in one swift motion and twisted her so as to flip to her back, but he was on her again as soon as she realized what had happened._

_His body covered hers effortlessly, sucking her collarbones and opening her thighs as wide as they would go. She found herself a little disappointed that he didn't seem to intend to tie her up, but forgot the thought as he pressed himself against her once again. "Nh….mmmmm…" her mouth produced syllables that didn't exist._

"_Sakura." He breathed warningly. She knew what he was saying. After so many years of one-worded sentences from him, she could understand fairly well what he needed without his having to say it all. She took a deep breath and nodded in consent._

_She hadn't noticed he had removed his shirt until that moment while he stretched her panties to the side, not removing them in his haste. He trusted into her without candor, covering her mouth to keep her sharp cry as muffled as possible. Nobody would hear, with how far out they were, but she supposed _he_ just didn't want to hear it. She could tell he tried to slow down for her but, just as earlier, his passion split like lightning into disturbingly bitter movements and he couldn't help himself._

_It was the first time she had ever fought him; this wasn't what she had wanted- she didn't like this. Sakura pressed her hands onto his chest to push him away but he didn't seem to notice. She was like a light breeze against a brick wall. She hadn't realized before how much stronger than her he was. Now she could feel the danger from him that she should have felt like the other villagers did. She was afraid of him, she realized. Her arms snaked up his back to his shoulders where her nails raked as hard as they could, breaking the skin in her panic. "Sasuke…" she pleaded but almost choked on her next word as he gave one particularly hard thrust and covered her cry once again with his hand._

_She tried to order him to stop, but her voice was so broken that she couldn't understand herself. Her nails dug harder, and he groaned in what seemed like pleasure. He liked it and thrust hard again, hoping she would repeat it some more. She was not in the throes of passion anymore. She finally realized that the passion was all in her mind. There were no longer any loving kisses in her thoughts, there was just this unrecognizable man moving above her-grunting and panting; taking everything she had in herself._

_She didn't fight anymore, on fear that it would instigate him more. He enjoyed roughness, so she would wait silently until he was done. She would be still and bare the punishment of trusting such a man so quickly. What did she expect after he had tried to kill her while under the rule of Madara only three months before that? But she couldn't help it. She would always love him, no matter what._

_His hand over her mouth was bruising and his body became rigid after a few more thrusts. She was happy it finally ended, but scared of what would happen now that he was finished with her. Even if he acted like this, she still wanted him. She just didn't know if she would be able to look him in the eye at that moment. She felt ashamed in herself, though she knew she shouldn't._

_He paused with his face in the crook of her neck to catch his breath and Sakura idly wondered what she would do about contraception. She wasn't on the pill and didn't think about the protection of a condom. She felt like a downright imbecile. The shame brought tears of their own streaking down her temples and cheeks. She knew he would feel them dribble onto his face momentarily, but didn't care in the slightest at that moment. All she cared about was screaming to the sky. A loud, cracking sob tore from her throat into his hand._

_He seemed to realize his hand was still pressing her head into the ground, keeping her from moving away. His eyes seemed to widen as he snatched his hand back and looked away from her face. His body rolled from hers to her right side. She mustered up the courage to peek at him from the corner of her eye when her sobs quieted down after a while. He was still lying there. If he had left, she wouldn't have noticed. He lay on his back, his face in his hands._

_If Sakura hadn't known him better she would think he was crying. "Sasuke-" she was about to apologize but he got up swiftly, tugged his pants back on, and left the tent in the blink of an eye. She should have known that that was what would have happened, but she didn't think it through. Ino had told her that it hurt the first time; said that men couldn't stop themselves in that position. She knew that Sasuke was cold and aloof. She knew, deep down, that this would have ended badly- but she wanted him so bad that she didn't care at the time. Now, she realized that her decision affected not only her. He would never forgive himself. She knew that and that he would never speak of it._

_She could hear him pacing outside his own tent, something he did when he was pissed off, and hear the crash of a heavy and metal object outside being thrown into a tree. She guessed it was the large cooking cauldron over the fire that was still faintly flickering. His hands would be burned, she thought._

_She had been too cowardly to face him- too cowardly to say anything to him at all- and stayed in the tent._

_The next morning, when she dressed and left the tent to continue with the mission as planned, he was staring at the dead embers of the fire. The cauldron was twenty feet from the fire pit and the small spruce tree that had been in its way was un-rooted._

_He seemed calmer than the night before, staring more deeply into space. He noticed her presence but didn't look at her this time. She had slowly made her way toward him, grasping his hands to heal him. He let her do what she wanted, not fighting back as he usually would have. He didn't speak; his face never changed. She wanted to say something- anything, but feared it would only make matters worse._

_The walk to the village was even colder. It was especially awkward since she had to find herself a 'morning after' pill at the small pharmacy. The clerk was old and couldn't hear very well. She had tried to be as silent as possible, but the old man kept asking her to speak up. She finally surrendered and spoke it plain and clear, glancing towards the Uchiha to see his face. He was leaning on the wall a few feet to her right, arms crossed and eyes closed. For a moment she thought she saw him flinch._

That was the night it all began. His evasions of any bodily connection, lack of eye contact, he didn't speak to her... Hell! He never even protested when she healed him at _all_ anymore. These were such strange occurrences that even the clueless Naruto knew something was up. Even when she insisted on healing his superficial scrapes, just for a reason to touch him, he did not object. He let her do whatever she wished when he usually would have called her a demeaning name and walked away. It was as if this was his way of apologizing; by staying as far away as possible. And when he couldn't get far away in person, he would do it in mind. He wasn't there when he was there.

Like now. She had been staring off into space for so long and he was still staring into the fire. It could have been hours that she was remembering such things; she had lost herself in the thought. She gurgled down some more shots, trying to obtain some courage to say something to him. She hadn't tried to speak to him yet to resolve the issue. Every time she would be about to, she would punk out. _A coward through and through_, she thought.

She handed the falsk back to him. He took it silently and carefully once more without any contact and gulped down a healthy helping as if he was as strung out in thought as she was. She wondered idly how long he would be staring into the fire this time. He hadn't slept in days. She knows now why not. The nightmares seem to haunt him. Only she knew. Only she had heard him cry out in his sleep before. It was their secret. It was unspoken...just like that night.

She wondered, as well, how long it had been since he was with a woman again after what had happened. He kept himself so busy with missions nowadays that it seemed he didn't allow himself the time for _that_. She couldn't help but think about it. She had never been angry with him, after all. He was the one who was angry about it, as ironic as that was. She still wanted him as much as she did before, but how could she tell him that? She guessed that she could throw it out there casually…. "_So, Sasuke kun, how do you think the mission's going so far? Oh! And by the way, my passion for you is almost as powerful as my obsession."_ Hmmmm. She was sure that would go smoothly (insert sarcasm here).

Besides, he always responded more coherently to actions rather than words. With that and liquid courage coursing through her veins, she lifted herself lithely from her wooden chair and sauntered towards him. He wasn't expecting it, she guessed, because he looked quickly into her eyes then looked away after realizing his slip-up. Even when she stood directly in front of him, his gaze kept forward, looking through her. When she leaned forward, he did nothing to stop her, as she knew the wouldn't. But, when her lips gently pressed against his, his body seemed to come to life once more and he gently pushed her back while touching her with just the tips of his fingers for as short a time as possible.

The look he gave her made her feel like a child caught stealing cookies before dinner. It also invigorated her. His eyes were as dark and smoldering as ever, this time with warning instead of lust. She wished it was the other way. She wanted to live that night over and over again. She would do it differently. She wouldn't make him feel guilty. She brought it on herself; she wanted it. How would she make him realize that?

"I want you." She whispered so quietly it was almost nothing. He pressed his lips together, either to keep from yelling or something else, she wasn't sure. His face was still so stoic, even with the concentration in the set of his mouth and the grim line of his brow. "Stop frowning at me, because it's really not much of a turn on." she spoke softly for lack of anything else to say. He acted like she was repugnant and even being by her was a challenge that a god wouldn't be able to face alone.

He gave her a leveled gaze for a moment then sighed, looking back through her again. "No, Sakura." His voice was so flat and uncaring, it flared a little anger inside her.

"If this is about you feeling guilty for-" she changed her path of conversation when she saw his glare. "That was nothing. Really." She smiled a small smile, hoping he'd buy it.

"Are you trying to convince me or yourself?"

"You."

"That does not inspire me to believe you." He thought she was lying to him and herself.

He still wouldn't look at her either. She decided to be bold and leaned forward, as if to kiss him again, but he fell back- keeping two inches open between their lips. She grabbed him through his pants, rubbing him- as if it would convince him she was telling the truth.

"Does that inspire you?" she attacked his mouth, moaning into him. She had missed this, even though she had only had it once before...

Sasuke broke the kiss as soon as he could without hurting her and grabbed her wrist to stop her advancements through his pants, then fixed her with a thunderous glare. "Sakura, knock it off!" he growled under his breath through gritted teeth, trying not to wake the others. But she could see his resolve wavering. His grasp on her wrist was just strong enough to keep her in check, but not hurt her. It was controlled. She could use that to her advantage. It he didn't want to hurt her it would make it easier for her to ensue. He wouldn't be able to push her off without hurting her somehow.

She leaned forward again, pretending another kiss, but crawled onto his lap. The hand he had wrapped around her wrist was pressed into her core through her panties, but his grip did not falter. She realized again how much larger he was than her. His fingers alone overlapped each other while around her arm. The first time she noticed this, she was frightened. But, now it brought a sort of dangerous thrill. She knew Sasuke and knew that he would not hurt her now if he could help it. The last time was just a fluke. He had been in an unstable state and she had, even knowing that, instigated everything.

Maybe that was why he wouldn't touch her again. Maybe last time was just someone he could fuck and get what he wanted. What if he wasn't attracted to her at all, really?

"You don't want me?" she whispered and licked the shell of his ear. The raven haired man didn't move. She pressed her core against the hand incasing her own so that she could move her arm somehow. As she pressed into his hand, she was able to move hers marginally more to press into him. She could see his indecision and swept it to the edge. She knew the places he liked to be touched.

Sakura tilted her head to capture one lobe and felt his hand become involuntarily lax in his distraction. She used this as opportunity to delve deeper, unzipping his pants hastily and releasing him from his boxers. Her other hand was busy running up his shirt to the place he liked best. She could feel small scars that her fingernails had made on his upper back and shoulder blades. Her nails raked firmly down his spine, earning a slow intake of breath. She could feel him becoming increasingly aroused, but it wasn't enough. She wanted him again. All of him.

His hands made their way to her rear and pressed her more into his lap, her hand pumped him faster- keeping him aroused, but not satisfied with the speed. He panted and laid his forehead on her shoulder, trying to clear his head.

"Sakura…..stop." he repeated but pulled her deeper to himself.

"Then give me what I want." She ordered him. She slowed her hand slightly, making him groan in disappointment. She would drive him until he gave in. It was close now. An Uchiha didn't take keenly to being ordered around or played with. She wondered if he liked dirty talk.

"Do you like to know you're the only one who gets to fuck me?" she whispered huskily in his ear and pumped him a little faster. He became noticeable harder than a moment ago. His hands moved from her rear to grasp the back of her thighs for support.

"Don't you want a sex slave for the night? I'm yours." He groaned and grimaced, his head fell to rest on the back of the chair. His hips thrust slightly into her hand and she pumped a little harder again. He just needed a little more and he would be gone…

"Mmm. How do you want me? On my knees? On my back? You choose." With the last word she raked her nails down his spine and captured his lonely lobe again. The grasp on her thighs tightened marginally and his hips jerked upwards into her hand now, groaning into her hair. His growl was cacophonous when she suddenly stopped pumping him and grabbed a fist full of his raven locks, jolting his head back and speaking into his neck between bites and gentle sucks. She was never one for dirty talk but it seemed to pay off. To tell the truth she would never have known what to say- all her lines were form the infamous Ino.

She placed herself above his hardness and rubbed herself against him, not letting him enter her yet. "Hn, Sasuke-kuuun," she purred. "Do things to me that I've only fantasized about." she ordered into his jaw, the words vibrating against his skin. "Ah, come on. Show me how a real man fucks…." She went on. "Or I'll just have to find Naruto if you're not up to i-" That was all he needed- the breaking point.

He muffled her mouth again as he pulled her hips down over his, earning another sharp cry. But her cry wasn't of pain and it was his lips that muffled her noises. He knew that he should silence her, for she may wake the others, but he wanted to hear it. He wanted to hear her scream and know that this time it wasn't of pain. He wanted the others and anyone else who heard to know that she was his, that it was him who was doing this to her- making her moan in ecstasy. Her hips were honey, moving in time with his thrusts. She was just as tight as the first time and, just like the first time, he couldn't control himself.

And, just like the first time, Sakura loved every minute of it. She loved it because she made sure.

She will never be ignored.


	3. Natural Born Killers

I do not own naruto...

**This is one of the few times that i have created my own poem to put at the beginning of a chapter before, so tell me what you think!  
>Most of the line dividers symbolize a small gap in time, but only a few minutes or hours. It's supposed to be choppy, but it's still easy to understand.<strong>

**Sorry that it's so long, though, I was planning on it only being 3,000 words but it turned out being 20,533 words instead...yeah, i know...**

* * *

><p>While You Were Out<br>'Natural Born Killers'

* * *

><p><em>Why do I do such things?<em>  
><em>I do not know.<em>  
><em>I believe that it is who I truly am<em>  
><em>Deep down<em>  
><em>Originally<em>  
><em>And, therefore, I just do it<em>  
><em>Without knowing why<em>

_As opposed to the other actions_  
><em>That you know why you do it<em>  
><em>Because you have been told to<em>  
><em>All your life<em>  
><em>By outer influences<em>  
><em>Of what they believe to be moral<em>  
><em>Or just<em>  
><em>Or right<em>

_It is when the line between is blurred_  
><em>That you no longer understand your own mind<em>  
><em>From the minds of others<em>

_And you become unoriginal_  
><em>Inadequate in flavor<em>  
><em>A bitter taste in your own mouth<em>

_So please do not ask me_  
><em>Such a silly question<em>  
><em>In such a tone<em>  
><em>That implies I should stop<em>  
><em>Because you cannot mold me<em>

_I am original_  
><em>And my impulses are flawless<em>  
><em>Attempt to find a flaw or blemish<em>  
><em>Behold the void pantheon of perfection<em>

_My line is not blurred_  
><em>Try not to trip over it<em>  
><em>On your way out<em>

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><p>A man with an aptitude for greatness was also deemed weak by his vengeance. He was a man of high intellect, in light of the more commonplace dysfunction gathered in him throughout years of gritted teeth and gnawing self-loathing; years of subjection to empty, high-ceiling walls and strait-jacket restraints. His hatred for evil doings were construed in how the same hatred brought forth evil in himself.<p>

Even with the love and the caring disposition of one pink headed woman, he could not find it in himself to forget such arbitrary disgust of humanity; disgust that was knitted so tightly into his psyche that even God himself could not pry its hold from the pitiful man. He, therefore, permitted it his purpose to rid his presence of such noxious persons. The vice of the world would beg at his feet in conclusive realization of their wrong-doings- trembling like the nervous, belligerent, little mongrel dogs they were. The violation of such a world, that did not seem fit to execute itself, will stand in his presence and, through his sanctimonious action, become pure once more.

It was true he had a penchant for sufficiently talented foolishness and one certain rosette Psychologist. But what was his most distinguished of faults, one that he held with high regard and worked to veneer, was also his least noted. It was his respect of his own self. It was known of by no one, including he himself, and he enjoyed his ignorance. He relished in his inability to delve into the depths of his depravity. This uncanny ability of _ignoring_ when he most needed to _notice_ was well-used and, therefore, worn to the hilt. He used such an ability to protect himself from the people around him, effectively cutting himself off from all human contact and, perhaps, humanity in general. If so, he was the first in history to successfully attempt and _fulfill_ such an action. The first person that he knew of, at least.

This, in his opinion, should have earned him more respect from the man downstairs with reddish tinted complexion and pitch-fork in hand- flames licking his legs as he stands in a somewhat effeminate stance. This irked him slightly that he had not been praised by such a demon but he did not want any one person's acceptance. Only his own. One's own respect for themselves was all that was pure anymore in such a dilapidated world, he believed. But, at the same time, while it is the most important sliver of our humanity, it is also the least respected.

Self-respect was _not_ respected and, because of such disdain, was not able to respect _itself_. He laughed at the complex irony.

He gathered that his own trysts of multifaceted acts of hatred were well endowed and much needed in the world today. If not himself, who would be the one to avenge? He knew not of any one person with the needed amount of resentment towards such fice littering the world. He would take his own advice and do the job himself since he seemed the only one fit or acceptable for such tasks.

He would blemish his hands with the blood of such the people who brought him to where he now stood- because he was the only one capable, and it was why he still lived. He was also born this way- a murderer- and this fact made _it_ an uncontrollable act and should never be looked upon in such an abrasive manner as you do now. He needed no pity, nor scornful disapproval, from others because it was not his choice how he was born. It was simply just how it happened. He was born to kill and he was not troubled by such a fact.

And as you read upon this story- his story- please do not judge him. He is an abomination in the face of humanity and it is no one's fault. It was planned. It was fate.

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><p>It's hard to explain the exact sensations coursing through my body the moment that I realized that Uchiha Sasuke was a total lunatic.<p>

But, the one I _can_ tell you- because it was the most potent of them all- is titillation. I could still remember that day….

_From the moment our eyes met across the cold, steel bearings at Konohagakure's Hospital for the Mentally Deranged I knew that we would get along well._

_And I knew what I would have to do._

_The swaying light-bulb dangling from the ceiling cast a perfect light onto his pale skin._

_"Mrs. Haruno." The old psychologist that overlooked each patient for each individual disorder cleared his throat to grasp my attention. I reluctantly tore my eyes from the stranger's in the seat across from me and listened patiently for the old geezer to continue interrupting my mental professions of 'take-me-now' to the dark-haired young man in the strait-jacket. His eyes were as ebony as his messy tresses and they scoured my face unrelentingly the entire time I was in that seat. "This patient of mine is Uchiha Sasuke and he is my shot at winning the Nobel Prize from the Psycho-analytics' Convention."_

_I was immediately put-off by the old man after hearing such a confession. He was using this man- Sasuke, he had said- as a way to win some prize in his honorary doctor's 'club'? I tried to lessen the stiffness in my jaw after hearing such things to keep a poised appearance._

_"He is also my most prized possession." The old man, Dr. Kura, went on. "You see, young lady, I recently created a new direction of Psychology in which even the most hardened of our patients can be cured, and Mr. Uchiha is my example of that. As this village's most revered Psychologist, I am in need of your specific help." He twiddled his thumbs nervously in anticipation._

_"What is it you need?" I had asked carefully, emotionlessly._

_"I am too old to lead patients in my trips on my own and the Board of Psychology does not trust me yet with situations such as these…..but they trust you…."_

_"What are you getting at?" I interrogated skeptically and leaned across the steel table towards the old man sitting diagonally from myself._

_"I suppose I will just cut to the chase and save you the time of my blabbering. I wish to ask you the favor of taking my place in escorting Mr. Uchiha here to Burodu Village. Once there, I can meet you at the convention's hotel and pay you handsomely in exchange for your efforts." He was sweating. Probably scared of what I could do in my position as one of the Board's members myself. He was smart, though. Bringing in a patient as an example of a successful and self-created procedure would definitely get him noticed by the Board and have his name written in the most esteemed of Psychology scrolls. He would become richer than most Nobles if it worked as well as he had insinuated._

_I glanced at the Uchiha man and saw his slight smirk._

_"And….how would I be traveling? That village is quite far from here." I wondered to the doctor._

_All of his apprehension seemed to disappear off his shoulders after my sinuous agreement._

_"There will be a large bus from this hospital here tomorrow morning at 5:00 sharp. I will have the patient strapped and secured so he will not be of any danger to you and I will assign three guards to escort you to the village safely. All you have to do is make sure the patient behaves himself." He smiled ruefully, elated that his plan had finally come into fruition so easily._

_"I thought you said that he was cured with your '_magical new technique'_?" I deadpanned, earning a chuckle from the Uchiha. "Why should he be chained down if he is no longer a threat to society?"_

_"Just for precautionary reasoning, my dear, that is all. I just want to make sure everything goes without a hitch and you both arrive safely to the desired destination."_

I had agreed to everything the old man offered. I didn't know why I had wanted so badly to escort such a man at first, but now it seemed so obvious.

_Only five hours after leaving Konoha in the smelly, old and rickety bus that next morning I had come to realize that the Uchiha was not as 'cured' as the old doctor had previously believed._

_"Ahhh," The Uchiha sighed loudly, over-exaggerating the action. "That's much better." He stretched and stood from the dirt road, happy to be free from the restraints he had probably been wearing for years._

_I looked to the corpses of the three guards littering the bus's entrance where he stood just outside of it. I was breathing loudly and probably in shock when he seemed to remember that I was there and still existed._

_"Are you just gonna' sit there in the dirt all day or are you gonna' help me find a car?" He asked me. His voice was deeper than I thought it would be; sultrier. "It's not like we can drive this big thing around inconspicuously," he kicked the large wheel for dramatic effect. "And it's too hot to walk. We'll die from dehydration in two days."_

_"What?" I breathed. His question had confused me after I was over the initial shock of seeing such a thing happen. He had been so fast that I hadn't known what was going on until he slit the throat of the last guard right in my line-of-sight, five feet away. I didn't even know how he released himself from his strait-jacket! "Why aren't you going to kill me?" I asked, my voice trembling. I wished I could take that back as soon as I said it. I didn't want him thinking it was an invitation._

_"Do you want to be my next victim or something? W-O-W, you're demented." He said quirking his mouth in a nefarious manner and cracking his neck, groaning at the feel of relief it gave._

_"But-" I didn't know if I should say it or not, but I was sure he already knew so I said it anyway. "You just killed three government guards!" I yelled into the desert air. It was so hot that I would have done anything to get out of the sun. "I can't come with you now! The police will find out what happened when they come searching for the bus and they'll think _I_ had some kind of part in it." I was beginning to hyperventilate from the truth in my realization._

_"We have at least three days until they figure something's up. We can sit here all day talking about this shit, but I'd rather not. So, either you shut up and come with me or I leave you here to die. Besides, the cops will take one look at you and tell that you weren't the brains of the operation- and if they do, it is better to ask for forgiveness than assent."_

_I ignored his jab at my soft and weak appearance and decided that the man's reasoning was sound before agreeing to go with him. I would rather have taken my chances with _him_ than the sun. I wouldn't be able to survive alone in the desert and from the appearance of the Uchiha it seemed that he knew what he was doing._

You see, he was a natural born killer- the total opposite from me. But after that one moment, seeing his true self even though we knew nothing of each other, I knew we were very much alike. Besides, I was always able to learn quickly and when he offered me the opportunity to join him I did not think to refuse. I could get used to being around him, I thought to myself. And I did- quickly. It's funny how the human mind can adapt to something so completely different without you even realizing what's happening.

Sasuke considered it his 'job' to kill people and when he did his job, he went _all_ out- setting the standard of "not to be fucked with" very high.

But somehow we had found each other- even if it was in such a place as that shitty prison-of-a-hospital. Perhaps this was fate; we were supposed to do this together. Let's face it, we both loved our job and we were damn good at it! Why not join forces to better ourselves? We both needed each other. I needed him to get me out of the mess he had gotten me in in the first place- and he needed me. I didn't know why yet but he wouldn't have kept me around it he didn't. I was going to go with him and do whatever was necessary to survive.

* * *

><p><strong>Day One<strong>

After successfully flagging down a driver and high-jacking the car we headed onto an unmapped road towards a seemingly empty horizon. "Don't you feel bad at all? That man is most likely going to die out there." I asked the Uchiha in the driver's seat after a few miles ahead of where we had left the poor guy.

"I don't wanna' hear that bull-shit, lady." He tilted his head and fixed the rear-view mirror until it was perfectly to his liking. "_Your_ job is psychology. _My_ job is to kill people. I'm in the "slaughter" business and, let me tell you," his breathy laugh sent chills up my spine. "Business is booming!"

"Let's get this straight, alright?" he looked at me like I was stupid to talk to him in such a way, but I continued. "My name isn't lady. It's Sakura. If we're going to have to deal with each other until God-knows-when we're going to have to call each other by our names, Sasuke."

"Alright." He chuckled, finding me amusing for some reason.

"Dr. Kura said you were cured…." I trailed off, changing the subject, as if he didn't know already.

"I tricked him into believing I was cured because the man would have taken any reason to think his 'genius remedy' had worked. It was simple 'cause he thought his patients were ignorant and incapable of doing anything but worship him." he laughed bitterly. "He should have given us I.Q. tests when we were committed into the facility instead of psychology assessments. They'd be surprised to find out that half of the people they were treating were smarter than the doctors themselves. Why do you think it took them so long to find me?" His tone was matter-of-fact the whole way through.

"I'm going to go on a limb here and guess that you were committed for killing people?" I pretended to sound surprised.

"I killed my family when I was younger. I can't remember why but the idea just _popped_ into my head and I slaughtered them in their sleep! All together I've killed sixty four people. Oops, sixty seven….I forgot about the guards." He always made a strange expression when he talked about things like that. His eyes would widen while he said a couple of the words, looking deep into you, then they would go back to normal while he would smirk slightly and lift his eyebrows once before becoming stone-faced once more. "I revel in being wicked. I love it." Our conversations and his mood were bouncing around to different subjects so much that my head was failing to make sense of it all. The only thing I knew for sure was that this was the first road-trip I had ever been on and it was with a mentally warped asylum-escapee. This was not something I wanted to tell my grandkids- if I even lived through this to have any.

After a while the silence became strange. I just guessed it was because he admitted to massacring his family without a hint of regret; the behavior of a textbook sociopath. "So, how long have you been in this 'job-field' for?" I asked to deflate some of the tension, though it was a crude question to ask in light of what had happened. But it was the only one I could think of.

"As long as I can remember, and loving every minute of it!" he smiled brightly at me and I deduced that his lust or blood was past the point of redemption. I couldn't help but smile back, though what we were talking about was ludicrous and any sane person would never smile at such company.

I had given myself a psychology test once, just for curiosity's sake, and hadn't done well. Nobody is sane. There is insanity in all of us- we just need to be in the right place with the right person for it to take over.

He seemed to bring out the worst in me and, without realizing it, I was starting to act more and more like him.

* * *

><p><strong>Day Three<strong>

It had been two days since his 'break-out' from our course to Buradu Village and I still wasn't sure what the man's plan was. He didn't seem to have a plan at all, actually, and I was pretty sure we were lost.

"Do you even know where we are?" I sighed and kicked my feet onto the dash-board for a more comfortable position. We had been in the car for almost 48 hours straight and we were running low on gas….again. I had asked him a couple hours back why we couldn't stop somewhere to sleep or eat, but he just said, "The cops are on to us by now. We need to get as far away as possible from Konoha," In that deep voice of his. "How much longer until we're out of the desert?" I wined childishly and tried in vain to roll the window down more. The sand had gotten into the gears, making it impossible for me to roll it down more than half-way.

Sasuke sighed, annoyed by me, and replied, "We're in Suna."

"What?"

"Suna." He reiterated calmly. "It'll be a couple more days before we make it into Sound Country. We'll be safe there." He said it as if he wasn't telling me that I was about as far away from my home as I could possible get.

"I can't go to Sand Village! Or Sound! Look at me!" I ordered, but he had been the entire time- doing his weird expression thingy- and dangerously refusing to look at the dirt road. "They'd kill me as soon as I walked past the gate!"

"Yeah." He agreed.

"You're supposed to make me feel better, not agree!"

"You want me to lie to you?" his expression was blank. "I don't think I can do that morally."

"Are you fucking serious?" I asked incredulously. I wasn't looking for an answer so I just stared out the window and pretended he wasn't there for the next half hour. Of all the things a psychopath could choose as immoral, he chose lying? I couldn't wrap my head around it.

"Shit." The man let out a low whistle and got out of the car. He grabbed the last of the water in the back-seat that he had gotten from the gas station (the one he robbed) earlier that day. I didn't know what he did to the clerk, and I didn't want to know. I tried to see what he was doing through the front wind-shield but the dirt and grime was so caked on that it was a useless effort on my behalf.

After a moment my curiosity got the best of me and I stuck my head out of the window, only to see his silhouette walking down the path almost fifty feet away.

"What the hell are you doing?" I yelled to him, hoping he hear me over the abrasive winds.

He stopped and half turned towards my direction behind him. "The car's out of gas." He clipped out and continued to walk.

I jumped out of the car so fast that I fell into the sand before sprinting to him. "Well you could have informed me, you ass-hole!"

* * *

><p>"How much water do we have left?" my throat was so dry that the words came out sounding like rustling, cracking leaves.<p>

He gave me the jug and I chugged the rest, throwing the empty carton over my shoulder lazily. He didn't seem to be effected by the heat whatsoever. He hadn't drunk any water in a while.

"Why aren't you thirsty?" I groaned and hunched over beneath the sun, as if I was carrying its weight on my back.

"I am. I just practice self-control."

"Don't bull-shit me like that, Uchiha." I spat. "If you had any _shred_ of self-control, we wouldn't be in this situation in the first place!"

He just ignored me. I realized that whenever I said something that he didn't like or didn't want to particularly hear, he would just pretend that I hadn't said anything at all. He apologized to no one.

"The Village shouldn't be far now. Maybe, if we're lucky, another car will pass by before we die. It's actually a pretty good chance that one will." He said as he looked up to the sun. It was almost mid-day and the ball of heat was coming close to blazing directly overhead. I trusted him that a car would come, if only for the hope of it. "If that happens we'll just take it and be to Suna by nightfall."

"You have _no_ regard for the law!" I tried to keep my voice leveled.

"Are you sure? Perhaps the law has no regard for me…." He pondered and rubbed his chin with a furrowed brow. I didn't know if he was joking, but it wasn't very funny.

"That doesn't even make any sense!"

"Doesn't it?" he did his wide-eyed, eyebrow wagging thing again.

"Stop that!" I ordered. The heat was exhausting me and I didn't want to hear his twisted, cryptic life-lessons anymore until I was in some air-conditioning. I sighed in defeat.

* * *

><p>I lost track of how long it was but it seemed like an eternity before we spoke again. I was actually relieved when he spoke. I realized that his voice was soothing to me in my time of distress. For all we knew the police could be a mile away and coming in fast….<p>

"Car." Was all he said, but that was all I needed to jerk my head up in attention. I had been staring at the ground while I walked since the last time we had spoken.

I watched the little shiny dot on the horizon coming toward us until it was big enough to make out. It was a silver car with one driver. "Air-conditioning!" I practically cried and lifted my hands and face towards the sky as if I was praying.

I was so excited that I ran to the middle of the road and jumped around a few times, flailing my arms like a buffoon, to get the driver's attention. The car came screeching to a halt ten feet in front of me, sending sand flying into the air before the wind blew it away.

"You two need a ride?" the man asked. I nodded a 'yes' so fast I felt like I had given myself a concussion. He had brown hair and was balding. His mustache moved when he talked like it was a caterpillar on his face and his glasses were too big to stay upright on his nose without him pushing it up every couple seconds….but at least he had a car.

"Where ya' headed?"

"Whichever way you are." Sasuke offered and told me to get in the front seat.

"Why?" I asked. It was strange that he would tell _me_ to sit in the front and agree to go in the _opposite_ direction of Suna considering he was so…..i didn't even know how to categorize someone like him. 'Controlling' could work, I guessed.

"Just do it." He looked at me like I was retarded and hopped in the backseat.

I followed suit and hopped onto the cool, leather seats. The man driving jerked the car into gear and we were headed back towards Konoha direction at thirty miles an hour.

"What's your name?" I asked the man, even though I didn't care; I just didn't want to be rude.

"I'm Horu-" he tried to answer but was immediately cut off by Sasuke's not-too-politely toned question of "Do you have any water?" I glared at him but he ignored it.

"It should be under the seat back there." The man answered and I heard the Uchiha in the back seat fumbling around until he handed me a bottle of my own. I chugged it down as fast as I could and held my hand out for another while watching the sand-dunes pass us out the window.

"You sure are lucky I saw you two. You wouldn't last a day out here in the desert alone. There's news all the time in Suna about bodies in the desert. In fact, this morning there was a report that some maniac guy who escaped from an asylum and a woman were wondering the desert of Konoha on foot after killing three-"

The loud boom in my left ear made me drop the bottle onto the floor and jerk away instinctually with a loud yelp of "What the fuck?" while braining the back of my head on the window.

The driver's body slowly sank onto the steering wheel. The car's horn honked, long and slow, when his forehead rested against it- unmoving. The blood dripping from the windshield was gruesomely splattered across the dash-board and radio as if it was paint flung onto a canvas from a paintbrush.

"Is that?..." I wanted to ask but decided not to, pointing at a chunk of warbled gunk that could possibly be a part of the man's brain.

"Yeah." He answered.

"Where the hell did you get a gun from?" I twisted fast in the seat to confront him face-to-face for the answer to my shrieks.

"One of the guards we 'offed'."

"We? I think you're forgetting that _I_ had no part in it. It was _you_!"

"Now you're just being too literal." He insulted and lifted himself gracefully out of the car. He opened the trunk, jostling the car a little, and whistled lowly. I looked to the body next to me and winced. There was _no_ way I was going to sit in here with some random guy's carcass.

I jumped out of the front seat and rounded my way to the back of the car. The wind was harsh and flipping my pink hair into my eyes. "Why was there a sword in the trunk?" I asked no one in particular, perplexed as to why a man like him would carry such things with him in the desert.

"I don't question these sorts of things." He admired the long steel of the blade as he ran his palm up along its sharpness and let out another low whistle. "This thing is _so damn awesome_." He said the last three words long separated from each other to emphasize its 'awesomeness' while flailing it around like a light-saber. He dragged the sword in the dirt to the driver's-side-door of the car. He motioned for me to follow but I decided to stay and rummage around for anything else we might need beneath the pile of old clothes.

"There's more water in here!" I called out to him over the wind. "There's a tire, too. _And_ some lint balls! Oh, happy day!" I sang out in a bitterly sarcastically tune.

I looked over so see what he had to say and because the horn had stopped- I was hoping we would find some kind of food and was sure he was wishing the same thing for we hadn't eaten in two and a half days- but he was happily dragging the man's body ten feet from the car. I didn't know what he was doing and, frankly, I didn't care.

I slammed the trunk closed with all the strength I could muster and rested my hip against the smoldering metal, watching the Uchiha at work.

He was chopping away at the corpse's arms and legs, swinging the sword with expert grace while whistling show-tunes and slow-dancing with himself.

"Why are you doing that?" I asked curiously, watching with amazement at his lithe swings.

"I like the Waltz." He said as if it was completely matter-of-fact and wasn't strange at all.

"No. I meant, why are you cutting him up?"

"It'll be easier to burn the body when it's in smaller pieces." He gave me a thousand watt smile and I wished that I was able to contribute more in reply than my strangled "Oh."

"I think I should tell you now that you are exuding behavior that has border-lined to the point of psychopathy. Your loyalty to your 'job' is almost to the brink of obsession in your commitment to every kill." I cocked my head to the side as I observed him. His breathing was erratic with the thrill of his latest victim's demise and he had never seemed as desirable to me as he did at that moment.

"I appreciate your thesis, Doc., but can you save it for later and help me clean this up?" he asked, looking around for something to start a fire with.

"That's not my job. I'm just here to make sure you don't do anything crazy." I lectured in a scholarly tone and walked back to the car with a sashay of my hips.

"Am I the only one here who's not completely deranged?" he yelled as I hopped back into the car. The blood was still splattered across every inch of the dash but I easily took care of that with a couple shirts from the back-seat. Once I was satisfied that it was clean enough I turned the cold air on full-power and positioned the vents onto myself, watching him dispose of the body.

"I understand why you have a hard time feeling sympathy for humanity when you loathe it." I deduced like the doctor I was and pulled my shirt up, tying it with an old hair-tie I had around my wrist to keep it in place. It was too sultry to wear Konoha clothing in Suna weather.

"I find no use in humanity." He said flippantly with a wave of his hand and sparked a fire with some raw materials he found in the sand. "If any of them try to ridicule the way I live, I'll slaughter everyone they ever cared about. Then, perhaps they'll understand what it's like to taste…" He paused and threw a random arm from the ground into the fire. "A little of my hatred."

"I should really be writing these symptoms of yours in my notebook; maybe even mumble something about 'psychological profiles' as I write. I'm supposed to dissect your 'mental situation' along with make sure you behave yourself, too."

"Well, that's two things you're not doing very well, huh?" He took a glance around to make sure there weren't any limbs he forgot.

Once the driver was charred to his liking he joined me in the car. He started it loudly, flipped it around back towards Suna, and peeled off onto the sand-hardened path.

"What I'm about to say is _really_ gonna' piss you off…"

"What?" I asked but wasn't sure if I really wanted to know. By the tone of his voice, it wasn't going to be good.

"I forgot to check the guy's wallet before I set him on fire." He wrinkled his nose and clicked his tongue like a child caught doing wrong.

"Well, that's just fucking incredible!" I said in a way to let him know that I didn't find it incredible at all and crossed my arms to let him see that I was not talking to him anymore. How did he expect us to get any food now?

* * *

><p>I hadn't spoken to him for the last forty-five minutes before finally calming down enough to contribute anything.<p>

"So…. why do we need to stop at a hotel when we arrive?" I started conversation a little while after he informed me of where we were staying. It seemed like every time we were in the constricted space of a car that talk would die without any help from either of us.

"I have a diabolical master plan." He stated, staring at me instead of the road with a positively bored expression for a long time until he decided it was long enough. He was messing with me, I guessed. He seemed to like playing around with people to see their reactions, and me in particular. "But first I need to see the Minister of Suna. He's an old friend." he smirked when he said this like it was a joke. "Then I have _someone_ I need to 'take care of' before we get to sound."

He made a show of thinking hard for a moment. "Alright, what are we going to do when we get to that _someone_?"

"Tie him up; cut him into pieces…..something poetic, I guess."

"Do you have any idea how complex and psychotic you sound when you speak?" I turned to him, wanting to see if he realized it, too.

"Something complexmay also be well-organized and logically constructed. But, a thing that is complicatedwill have something irregular and perverse in addition to fundamental intricacy. Complexity is more formal and technical while something like, let's say humanity, can be perverse."

"That's what I'm talking about, Sasuke! You say things that are insane but you say them in a way that makes you sound like a genius. But, in all actuality, they are horrible philosophies! You should really thing about getting some professional help after we finally finish your 'master plan'." I put the last word in quotations with my fingers.

"Nah, I'll be alright." He wrinkled his nose again and shook his head like the idea of professional help smelled rotten.

He tapped his fingers in time to a song I could barely make out over the static of the old radio. I turned the station to one that was actually broadcasting correctly in the specific area we were traveling in and relaxed to the familiar beat of "Around my Head" by Cage the Elephant.

"I was surprised when you didn't freak out about this car's owner like you did with the guards the other day." Now it was his turn to start conversation.

"I'm used to you by now." I tried to sound like a hard-ass but he only found it amusing.

"Are you implying that i don't frighten you anymore?" He did his wide-eyed smirk-y expression again.

"No. I'm just saying that, with everything that has happened, I'm just going to go with the flow. Whenever you do something abstruse or deranged, I'm not even going to care anymore." I lifted my head high with my resolve.

"That's the spirit!" he took it upon himself not object to such an opportunity and turned the volume up to full-blast.

* * *

><p>"We're going to need some money if you want to stay at the hotel, Sasuke. We also need to eat. I feel like I'm going to pass out." I didn't want to sound like I was whining, but I was so low on energy that I wasn't sure I would be able to get out of the car. We had finally made it into Suna's gates and were pulling into the hotel parking lot. It was night-time already and almost the end of our third day since leaving the bus in Konoha desert.<p>

"Hmmm. I'd say you are correct." He agreed and put the car in park, tearing the keys from the ignition. "Stay here until I come for you." He said, leaning into the open window with a wink. He stood and looked around the parking lot in a paranoid way that I didn't like before leaving.

"Sounds good to me." I sighed to myself and relaxed into the seat after he walked through the fancy front-entrance of the hotel. I had a nagging feeling in the back of my head that I wasn't comfortable with. '_He's up to something…'_ I admitted to myself with another sigh. I had been sighing a lot lately. The last time he told me to stay in the car was at the gas-station that he ended up robbing. "Argh!" I growled loudly and kicked the door open not-too-nicely, storming my way to the entrance as well.

"Excuse me." I tried to get the clerk's attention at the front counter. "Excuse me." I tried again a little louder.

"Welcome to Suna Villa, the finest hotel under the sun." her voice was high-pitched and way too friendly for someone I didn't know. "How may I be of help to you tonight?"

"Have you seen a young man come in here? He is about this tall," I held my hand a foot above my head to help in the description. "He has black hair that looks like a chicken's ass and dark eyes. He's kinda' pale, muscular, and always has a bored expression." I tried not to laugh at the thought of what his face would look like if he heard me describe him. Probably uncaring….

"Yes I did. He took the stairs there on your left-"

I didn't let her finish before I sped to the very stairs she spoke of. My steps reverberated through the empty halls of steps until I reached a long, carpeted hallway. I glanced around quickly and listened for any motion but ran to the next staircase when none came.

I began to think I should have stayed in the hallway until I heard thumping on the stairs above me. I ran up each step as fast as I could until I almost smashed into the Uchiha in my haste as he turned the corner onto the flat between cases.

"What do you think you're doing?" I gasped when I saw the body he had dragged down the last three flights of stairs. The man's head bashed into each step as he was pulled.

"Getting something to eat. Do you know where the closest Denny's is? I want some pancakes." He asked, his stance completely relaxed, as if I knew the way around a city I had never been to before. He tossed a wallet to me as he dragged the body to a garbage chute in the wall and stuffed it in, closing it a few times to make sure the guy wasn't stuck.

"This is unacceptable!" I thwarted him. "Denny's is a horrible idea." I crossed my arms defensively across my chest. "How about Ihop?

"I can't go to _IHop_, they're completely unhygienic." he acted as if what I said was the most unattractive thing possible, wiping the blood and dirt from his face with his white shirt.

"Fine." I vouched. I was too hungry to argue. "We need to change, though." I said and dangled a room-key I had taken from the wallet in front of his nose.

* * *

><p>"Damn it, I want my fuckin' pancakes!" Sasuke growled, squinting his eyes around the restaurant and rubber-necking his head this-way-and-that to look for the waitress.<p>

"I'm sure they'll be here soon. Calm down. They're just pancakes." I tried to stop him from attracting stares. If he was going to act like a weirdo I didn't want him doing it in public. "Do you have no cares about what others think?"

"Just pancakes? Just PANCAKES?" he ignored my question and waited for me to answer but I just gave him a level stare over the table. "You're fucking kidding me, right?"

"Here you two are." The waitress, a pretty brunette, interrupted and smiled and placed the platters in front of each of us on the table. "And here are your waters. Is there anything else you need?" she smiled at me but frowned at Sasuke when she looked over to see him shoveling the steaming, fluffy, syrup-covered, flattened circles of batter into his mouth.

"We're fine. Thanks." I strained a smile of my own and waited until she was gone before I leaned across the table towards the Uchiha. "Can you _try_ and be less conspicuous, please?" I whispered bitingly.

"No." he lamented with a mouth-full of chewed dough.

"You can't just go around giving in to every impulse you have…" I tried to lecture but knew he wouldn't listen.

"Actually, I can." He whipped his mouth with a napkin and chugged his water, throwing the straw onto the ground and lighting a cigarette. I idly re-read the 'no smoking' sign on the wall. "I have no impulse control." He said as though it was the pentacle of truth.

"You're shitting me, right?" I was sure he was lying, even with how he implied earlier that he found it immoral.

"A pretty little girl like you should really watch her mouth. You never know who is listening or what ideas they might get." He lifted his brow and stared deep into my eyes without sincerity. I furrowed my own brow and he gathered that I wasn't in the mood to hear his witty remarks at the moment. "I'm not shitting you." He leaned back and patted his full stomach in relish. "If I got it into my head to get up on this table and strip naked, I would do it without another thought. Ahhh…there is nothing like a smoke after a deck of pancakes….." he exhaled the smoke in my face loudly. I sputtered for air and relaxed myself from leaning on the table, fanning my hand before my face to relieve myself of the smelly fog.

"Why do you act like this?" I tried to sound outraged, but ended up sounding curious.

"I don't know. I believe that things like that are the natural parts of you. If you don't know why you do those things, it's because it's just who you are- so you do them. As opposed to the things that you know why you do them; those are learned over time by what others want of you." He took a long drag of the cigarette again and ashed it on the floor. "Does that make sense?" he asked but didn't look to me for an answer. I guessed he was asking himself. He just held up the cigarette and turned it around to gaze at every angle. "You have to keep track of the parts of you that are deep down at the beginning of yourself- because that is who you truly are. You need to separate those parts from the parts of you that were molded by outer influences. When the line is blurred between the two is when one no longer knows themselves or understands their own mind."

"So what you are saying is that you were born as a killer?" I was skeptical, but he was so convincing that I was beginning to believe it could be possible.

"Well, it sounds bad when you say it like that…." He put out the cigarette in the left-over syrup on his plate then linked his hands behind his head.

"Sometimes you really make me want to hit you." I admitted finally. I had wanted to tell him that for the last fourteen hours.

"Would you like to 'step outside', as they say nowadays?" he gestured to the door, instigating a brawl.

"I don't want to fight you, Sasuke." I admonished with a shake of my head.

"Why not?" he tried to pressure me into it. "I'd fight me." He wagged his eyebrows. "I'll even let you get a few punches in-" he effectively dodged the packet of butter I threw at his forehead. "We should get some sleep." He decided. "We're both a little high-strung."

We left the Denny's and headed back to the hotel in silence.

* * *

><p><strong>Day Four<strong>

I dreamed about Sasuke. He was standing on the balcony by the large bay window of my apartment back home and I was overpowered by his beauty. His very presence filled the room and he hadn't even stepped inside yet. It appeared impossible that anything could have been so perfect.

"Wake up…." I heard a deep voice and felt something prodding me in the ass. I turned groggily to see him standing next to my bed with his hands in his pockets and poking me with his foot. "Eugh!" I groaned and covered my head with the pillow I was sprawled over but he pulled the blanket off of me with one tug when he felt I wasn't listening.

I bunched up into a ball when the cool air hit me and kicked my legs childishly, jolting the bed and my body. "Five more minutes." I wined loudly.

"We have a lot to do today, Sakura, and I need your help. Why do you think I keep you around?" His voice was further away now in the kitchen. He was so quiet I hadn't heard him move across the floor.

I sat up so fast the blood rushed from my head. "You keep me around for _that_?" I wasn't as surprised as I had sounded. I wasn't ignorant either; I knew there was a reason why he hadn't killed me yet and I didn't expect it to be pretty. "Maybe I should just run away…" I pondered aloud, tapping my finger on my chin.

"Well, it's definitely not for your sparkling personality." His sarcasm was perfectly rounded. "And don't flatter yourself; you wouldn't be able to get away. I'd find you in ten minutes." He lectured and gave me a hard, threatening glare. "This guy had good taste…" he referred to the man he killed on the stair-well the night before while he grazed through the fridg's contents. He tossed me a random beverage from the contraption as if he hadn't just fully insulted me.

I was surprised in myself that I didn't feel more convicted about staying in a murdered guy's room and using his money.

"What are we going to do?" I tried to unscrew the lid, but failed utterly.

"Some recon. Basic stuff. You've seen spy movies, right?" he questioned, walking over and grabbing the bottle from me- unscrewing it himself and handing it back.

"Of course I have." I tried to hide my blush when I accepted the drink, remembering my dream, and hoping he didn't notice my reddening.

"Well, we're going to find the Minister-"

"In a place this big?" my jaw dropped to the floor. "Suna is twice the size of Konoha!"

"Stop complaining! Besides, the Minister only stays in the Gonton District- the street where all the casinos and bars are. It's relatively small so it should be easy to find him. I went out this morning and heard from a _very_ reliable source that he is going to a party tonight. We need to get ourselves on that guest-list by ten o'clock or we'll miss our chance." This little bit of information seemed to make him happier than I had seen him before.

"Where did you go this morning?" I didn't know why but I didn't like the idea of not knowing where he was.

"Getting you something to wear. You can't walk around looking like _that_," he gestured to my body. "And there aren't any women's clothes anywhere in this hotel room. We also have to dress up for the party later so I found you a sexy little number to wear tonight." He winked and pointed to the small pile of clothes stacked on the corner of my bed. "You don't get to see what the dress looks like until before the party, though."

"Oh." Was all I said in return.

"Now, get dressed. We need to get going. It's already noon." He walked out into the sitting room to give me the privacy of dressing on my own.

* * *

><p>"What about him?" I asked, pointing at a man in green standing on a corner with a suspicious aura. "He's potentially evil-looking."<p>

"How about you just let me look considering that I'm the only one who knows what he looks like." He moved my pointing hand out of his way and peered into the throngs of villagers again. We had been searching the town for the last five hours and my feet were killing me.

"I don't think you're going to find him by yourself." I tried to convince him to let me go back to the hotel, but he wouldn't budge in his resolve. "Tell me what he looks like so I can help." I offered reluctantly, hoping to get this done and over with as soon as possible.

"What a Minister _should_ look like." He gazed at me like I was stupid or something. "Black cloak, shiny shoes, righteous expression, and a pious air about him."

"Well, _sooorry_!" My attitude was well-justified after spending so long in the sun with such an infuriating man. I tried to help after that but found that I stared at Sasuke as much as I stared into the crowd. I noticed how broad his shoulders were for the first time. His steady arms were a slight bit tanner than the rest of his pale skin and his hair caught hints of blue in the direct sun. He wasn't wearing the unbecoming grey shirt he was assigned to wear at the hospital anymore. He changed into one of the white shirts in his last victim's closet and some denim jeans. I knew he noticed my steady gaze but he never seemed irritated and didn't tell me to stop.

I didn't know how much time passed after that before Sasuke decided that our best chance at finding the Minister was at the party. So we headed back to the hotel to ready ourselves.

We hadn't brought the car but we had stopped our search fairly close to the hotel. We only had to walk for a silent ten minutes before we were again to the door of 'our' room. Sasuke ran the key-card through the lock and the door let out a loud hiss of air as it opened automatically. It was one of the nice hotels where the bar turned on when you entered your door, releasing cool smoke onto the wine bottles and cases of hard liquor lifting on mechanical shelves.

"Your dress is hanging in the closet." Sasuke sounded uninterested in everything he ever said, but I was becoming used to it. He didn't seem to mind me either, though he swore his only reason to keep me alive was for some mystery of needing my help with something. I was sure it was because he just wanted the company. After so many years alone in a padded cell he was hungry for the presence of another human being and since I was small and not of any threat there was no reason why I couldn't be that person. I was happy with my new diagnosis and decided to believe that instead of the flaky reasons he gave.

He might have been a psychopath, but he _was_ still human after all…..deep down somewhere. Maybe behind some metaphorical door or wall….or locked away in some mental hutch with a padlock but no key.

I mused over this new idea about my new 'patient' on my way to the shower, ignoring the closet. I was almost biting myself with the excitement to see what the dress looked like but I didn't want him to know. I had never been to a fancy hotel party, especially one with political figures present, and I had never been in any position to dress better than a woman's version of a suit. I was only a psychologist and didn't have any need to be invited to such soirées.

I wondered how long I could stay in the shower before Sasuke came looking for me. He liked to rush people, you see, and I wasn't one who liked to be put on a time-schedule when it came to hygiene. All my worries melted away in the cool water, however, and once I saw all of the sand from my hair accumulated at the bottom of the shower I decided that I didn't care. I lathered myself as well as possible, squirting the entire travel-size bottle of shampoo/conditioner- courtesy of the hotel- onto my head.

Once I was sure I was clean enough- I could almost see my reflection in my skin- I turned off the shower head with a deflated expression. It was the only time I got away from the Uchiha and all it accumulated to was twenty minutes.

"Are you almost done?" Sasuke hollered from the sitting room. He sounded impatient and I smiled to myself, happy that I could get under his skin so easily.

"I can be in here as long as I want to-" I stormed out of the bathroom but stopped when I sighted the small, black fabric lying fluidly on the corner of my bed. "be…." I finished quietly, running my fingers along the cloth's edge. It felt like suede but looked like fine silk, no doubt one of Suna's finest quality fabrics. "How did you afford something like this?" I was hesitant to put it on for fear of tearing it. It seemed so fragile.

"Whoever this room belonged to had a lot of cash stashed under the dresser. I did a little snooping around the premises last night."

It seemed like an eternity before I finally fit the dress onto the contours of my body. I was too afraid to just throw it on like everything else I owned. It was tight on the ribcage just beneath the bust and loose around the neck, black as night. It flared under the waist until two inches above my knees and the back was comprised of almost no fabric at all; a deep opening from neck to the base of my spine. The only fabric there was on the back was from my rear down and the tie behind my neck that attached to the cloth on my shoulders to keep it in place. When he said 'sexy little number' earlier I wasn't expecting something so extravagant. I was expecting 'street sexy' not 'intellectual sexy'. I had to admit that I rocked the look, though, not to brag.

I made my way to the sitting room to find the elusive Uchiha and trying to practice a graceful walk as I went but it didn't look as well as I was going for.

Once he was in my eye's grasp I didn't mean to stare but to say the Uchiha could pull off a black suit was an understatement. The black contrasted his features flawlessly and it reminded me again of my dream from that morning. Nothing could have looked so perfect.

But, of course, he had to say something profound to ruin the picture I had created in my mind.

"The cops are in Suna." He said it like it _wasn't_ a big deal and poured something with his back towards me. "It was on the news while you were cleaning up."

"What are we going to do?" I tried to hold back my growing fright. I wanted to go home, but not in a body bag and definitely not in handcuffs.

"Go along with the original plan, of course. We'll be in Sound soon, maybe even by tomorrow night if we leave after the party."

I didn't know what to do with myself. My hands were shaking and I was sure this wasn't going to end well. I was also sure I was quite close to an emotional breakdown. The bad guys never got away in the end. Every movie I had ever watched was proof of that fact. All I had was hope. The hope that he knew what he was doing and that I could trust him.

"Come here." He softened his voice and he didn't look as bored as he usually did. He could probably tell how strung out I was and was just trying to be nice and calm me down. No guy wanted to have to put up with a hysterical woman.

He handed me a glass of red wine and I took it as he placed his hands lightly on my shoulders and turned me around until my back was facing him. I felt him tugging on the strings of my dress, trying to tie them together as his foot nudged a pair of heels towards my feet on the floor. "How are we going to get on the guest list since we couldn't find the Minister?" I wondered.

"I'm not only good at killing." He informed with a smirk. I could hear it in his voice. "I can talk my way out of just about anything….or _into_ anything, in this case…I guess…" he bragged.

"Thanks for the dress." My voice shook strangely. I realized I was nervous and drank my wine in two gulps. I couldn't decide whether I was nervous being so close to him, afraid of him, or afraid of the police catching us….maybe even frightened of being caught and separated from him? I threw those kinds of thoughts form my mind before they could corrupt me. I was beginning to think like a crazy person, too.

He looked me up and down, spinning me around, and let out a long breath from his nose. "I have good taste, I must admit. But, it looks better on you than it did on that mannequin." It was the first decent thing he had said to me and he walked away just as quickly.

For some unknown reason he wouldn't be in my presence for more than a few seconds before finding something else to distract himself- and when he _was_ in my presence he would stick to only arrogant remarks. When we were in a car it was unavoidable, but in a hotel room (that wasn't even ours) he was able to space himself from me so well. I didn't want to admit it but I didn't like it when he did such things- ironically as that sounded. I let him murder innocent people, but didn't want him to be distant. I laughed at how pathetic I was. And I didn't know if I disliked his absence because I didn't want to be alone with my thoughts in fear of freaking out or because I just enjoyed being around him- though I _knew_ just how _wrong_ it was—or possibly both reasons.

I followed him after a moment of thought into the bedroom where he stood looking out the window suspiciously. I situated myself on my bed next to his and watched him for a moment. The party wasn't going to begin for another three hours and there was nothing to do in the time between. I had to admit, I was also bored. My days ever since Sasuke had basically _kidnapped_ me were filled with my sitting around and worrying about my future. I was either going to be killed by the Uchiha's own hand, arrested because the police would believe I was part of the crazy man's scheme, or succumb to committing suicide in my desperation. I didn't like sitting stagnant with my fearful thoughts.

"So, do you _really_ like the Waltz or were you just joking again?" I began.

He closed the curtains securely over the window and looked to me with a sigh. "I do not joke about the classics." He was matter-of-fact, as always.

"Can you teach me?" I asked and wished I had just kept my mouth shut when he looked at me skeptically. "I need to know how to dance if I'm going to have to try and blend in at a _real_ political party-bash." I gave the excuse but I was sure he saw through it to the truth.

He raised his eyebrows, thinking about something stressful- probably believing it a waste of his _precious_ time to teach me- and blowing a lungful of air from his mouth. "Alright." He agreed after thinking seriously. He walked to the stereo without haste and scoured the collection of CDs carefully. After a while of my nervous waiting he finally found a disc that was up to par with his liking and placed it carefully into the disc's entrance of the stereo. I wasn't familiar with the song- it sounded very old- but when I was just about to ask him he beat me to the punch and said it was called "Let's Go out Tonight" by Craig Armstrong.

"It's not a conventional song for people to Waltz to, but we'll make it happen." He said, smiling genuinely. He seemed to enjoy songs from the ancient era, I thought musingly, though he was my age. His steps were slow and careful as he made his way to stand before me. He held his hand out to me and thus I took it. His was so steady, waiting for me to accept his open palm, and mine was trembling until I placed it in his and his fingers curled securely around me.

I knew he would not appreciate to know how something as simple as his hand around mine could awaken the butterflies in my stomach from their deep slumber. There were many things I never told him, I realized, about his effect on me because he would not like those words. I was afraid that if I let him know just how agreeable I found his company to be, that he would no longer find my own agreeable and cast me out. This was what was forcing the trembles of my hand.

A guitar softly began with four tunes repeating, as if a lullaby, and became louder as the song progressed. His hands lead me in a way that was nothing less than commanding, but gentle and patient. Our faces were only inches apart and I could feel his light, calm breathing on my forehead, for he was nearly a foot taller than me. I was staring at his face so intensely that I did not notice his hand around my waist until he began to move my body in the desired direction and applying a slightly firmer pressure to my waist and hip than before with his touch.

"Side, side, forward, back…" he repeatedly led me by my waist with his right hand and his words, holding my right palm warmly in his left. For such a cold and calculating man he had a pleasantly warm body. His eyes were less cruel than usual, come to think of it. "That's right…" he appraised me quietly when I seemed to be moving correctly to his liking. I made one minor fowl-up, stepping on his foot before becoming quickly used to the steps, but he pretended as if I hadn't misplaced my step at all and continued to move my body with his.

"Pray for me….praying for the light." He sang softly in my ear with the steady lyrics and I could feel his lips whisper against my hair, tickling my temple. "Baby, baby…" His eyes were closed and his head was bowed slightly as if he was concentrating on the words very carefully, not wanting to miss a single beat of the crescendo, while his fingers released themselves from their hold in mine and splayed across my hand. His size was much larger from mine when placed flatly against each other in the air and my flesh was left with trails after his fingertips as they adventured my open palm. His calloused tips tickled mine while he trailed his fingers up and down my own in gentle patterns. "Let's go out tonight."

He moved his lips from my hair and kept his head bowed before me with his eyes still closed so that our foreheads rested against each other.

He connected our grasps loosely and elongated his arm outward; moving me out from himself for a brief moment with both our arms straight, then pulled me back. His hand rested on my bare lower back. I wondered if he could feel how sweltering my skin became when he touched me. He pressed my hips to his own firmly and moved me with him to the music once more, letting go and spinning me once, arms still connected over my head, like a ballerina. "I know a place where everything's alright…" his voice was soft while he sang lowly in perfect unison with the audio and rested his head against mine once more. Our noses were barely touching but it was still all I could think about. "Alright…..Let's go out tonight."

The song was slowing and I knew the end was coming all too soon as he bowed my body back, holding all my weight with the palm he still rested against the heated flesh of my back. My head dangled back towards the floor until the last few notes before I brought it up and came face to face with him.

It was one of the moments where you were sure the person looking into your eyes felt the same way you did with just one connecting glance and nothing in the world, nothing at all, could stop your lips from meeting. Nothing could ruin the way your heart pounds in your ears or how your hands are trembling still, but the thought isn't worth your time anymore because he's moving closer and closer and you only hope that the moment doesn't end and his lips would meet yours at a faster pace. The anticipation is killing you.

The song ended and silence was met this time with acceptance. It seemed like his lips were moving agonizingly slow and I was about to lift my own to his and deflate the apprehension in the air with my awaited kiss when a loud knock sounded at the door and it opened with a click.

"Your dinner, sir." The room service clerk explained, gesturing to the cart he pulled in and seeming embarrassed that he had interrupted us. I was still bowed under Sasuke's body, staring at each other, until the clerk asked a question I didn't hear and Sasuke puffed out an irritated breath, lifting me hack up until we stood normally. He let me go, trying not to seem obvious about pushing himself away from me again and carefully extracting himself. My waist and hand seemed chilly without the warmth of his body and I missed it more than I should have.

He walked over to the clerk and paid him, acting as if nothing just happened between us whatsoever. The clerk left quickly, leaving the large cart of delicacies behind for us. I could tell he didn't want to stay in the awkwardness any longer. "Eat what you like." Sasuke pointed to the covered trays of expensive food. "I didn't know what you liked so I got everything. I ordered while you were sleeping this morning."

I grabbed a chocolate covered strawberry and a glass of white wine, eating it in silence and watching him questionably. I wanted to ask him if he felt it, too, while we were dancing but he didn't look at me. He was back at the window and suspiciously watching out of it again with the curtain pulled to the side slightly and a cigarette resting between his parted lips.

"Thank you…" I trailed off, wanting to say more than that but chose not to at the last moment- which made my gratitude sound shoddy.

He didn't answer and just kept staring towards the streets fifteen stories down. I didn't expect an answer, though, so I just grabbed a plate of something that I didn't recognize and made my way into the seclusion of the living room to eat.

After a few minutes of eating in silence without looking at my food I decided that silence and I were not compatible. I needed to do _something_ to rid my mind of the Uchiha.

I had a few options: drinking, radio, or drugs. Since I was too afraid to do the third and I was saving the drinking for at the party, I found the remote and turned the radio on, logging the volume up until it hurt my ears.

The song was familiar, "Tear You Apart" by She Wants Revenge, and I was thankful for that. It reminded me of back home when I would hear it at Ino's house on weekends we spent together as friends.

It was an hour and a half before we spoke again. "Are you ready?" he asked stoically from behind the couch I was sitting on, making me jump slightly in surprise. I could tell from the change in his voice that he was back to the way he had been when we first met four days ago; brash, uncaring, and sadistic.

"Yeah." Was all I returned to him. I didn't know how to act in his presence anymore. I was so furious at the clerk for interrupting that I found myself wishing I could kill him. I frightened myself with the thought and realized how much like Sasuke I was becoming. But most of all, I wanted him to hold my hand in the air and press his forehead against mine. I just wished he would dance again.

* * *

><p>"Wait in the car." Sasuke said and it seemed all too familiar from the last two times he had ordered me to do the same thing. It meant, as always, that he was up to no good.<p>

"I'm going with you." I stated plainly and something in my voice stopped him from protesting. He just gave me a leveled stare for a moment and walked away, leaving the door open for me to follow. The limo that picked us up at the hotel was the finest quality automobile I had ever ridden in before. I didn't know how the man Sasuke had killed could possibly have enough cash in his wallet to pay for all of this, but I wasn't going to complain! At least we were putting it to good use….

I told the driver to wait for us until after the party and he nodded when Sasuke handed him a large tip to persuade him. We waited until the driver was out of sight before Sasuke walked past the entrance to the large mansion where the party was being held. The doors were pouring with guests trying to tell the guards their names to see if they made the guest-lists- each one was dressed extravagantly as well.

"Where are we going?" I tried to hurry and follow the long strides of the Uchiha but my heels were proving difficult to maneuver in. "The entrance is back there…" I pointed back to the direction we had come from over my shoulder.

"We'd never get in without our names on that list." Was all he said, stopping just outside of a dark alley halfway down the street from the social function.

"Wha-"

"Shhhh." He cut me off to quiet me. He was paying attention to something down the alley and I strained my ear to listen as well.

"You wouldn't believe some of the people who try to attend such soirees, Makimi! It's pathetic!" A boisterous man's voice reverberated off the stone walls of the alley as he spoke to the unseen woman around the corner with him.

"Who was it this time?" she laughed at his rudeness in a snobby, high-chinned sounding voice. "Don't tell me that shod of a girl Kariu-san had anything to do with it!" she snooted.

"No, but you won't believe your ears!" he led her on with his crude 'joke'. "Kibari-san tried to get himself on the list! He lost his fortune last year and still tries to pretend he is in par with our stature of people!" he laughed with her this time, sounding disgusted to be talking about Kirabi.

"When will commoners realize where their place is?"

I tried not to listen anymore as they began to get closer and closer to us. I didn't want them noticing us listening and nudged Sasuke in the side with my elbow to urge him on. "We're gonna' get caught eavesdropping!" I whispered and he gave me a look like I was the most clueless woman on earth.

"How do you think we're gonna' get on the guest list?" he dead-panned. "They're on it and we're not." He spelled it out slowly until I caught on to what he was trying to tell me.

"We're not killing them, Sasuke!" He covered my mouth when I almost yelled it and released me finally when I quieted down. "They may be horrible people, but we can't!" I tried to convince him, though I already knew it wouldn't work.

After a moment of him not agreeing and no change in his expression I realized that he was going to do it anyway. "I'm having no part in this." I said and crossed my arms in defiance.

"I don't have to get her name for you to use, you know. I'll just do it myself, then, and you can stay out here in the middle of Suna while _I_ attend the gathering." He knew this would work. Like hell I was going to stay by myself outside at night in an unfamiliar village!

"What do I have to do?" I groaned out agitatedly and listened to his plan.

* * *

><p>"Help…!" I yelled, glancing behind me in fear of the man I was chased by. "Someone, help!" I hollered again and turned the corner into the alley, running towards the two people I had heard only moments earlier. I could see their bodies walking towards me through the dimly-lit narrow passage. The alley was long and the cobble-stone walk had me straining to keep my balance.<p>

I felt a pair of rough hands grab my upper arm and toss me harshly into the stone wall when it seemed my pursuer successfully caught up to my sprint. My hand slapped loudly against the wet concrete as I caught myself against the wall, stopping my face from hitting, and the stinging from such blunt force was as if it were on fire. I felt my elbow drag across the wall and idly wondered how I was going to cover the scrape at the party. Injuries were _not_ part of the plan.

I let myself fall to the ground, looking up at my 'capturer' with distilled fear and desperation filling my face. Sasuke seemed amused by my commitment in my character of 'victimized citizen'. He smirked down at me from where he stood at my feet in front of my trembling body. "Got ya'!" he purred, smiling evilly, and leaned towards me as if he was about to attack, his face coming out of the blinding shadows and his expression frightening me fully. I knew he was only playing along but for a second I experienced what all of his victims must have endured before they met their deaths at his hand.

I wasn't playing anymore when I turned on my knees and tried to stand to run again, but he grasped my ankle and held me down. I let out a surprised shriek, probably too loud, and hoped that the man and woman at the end of the alley would hurry and interfere like they were supposed to. I hoped nobody else on the streets outside of the alley heard my cry for help. We didn't need any curious bystanders to kill after this.

"You!" the boisterous man from before intervened and ran towards us. "Hey, you! Stop!" he hollered in a gravelly voice and Sasuke looked up at our company and darted off into a side-street connected to the corridor I currently resided in.

The man and woman finally made it to me, a little hesitant still, when it seemed that Sasuke was gone for good and scared off. "Are you hurt, young lady?" the woman asked me, seeming to be truly worried about my condition. I held my throbbing elbow and kept my façade up.

"Thank you!" I cried out in a shaky voice and threw myself into the arms of older man who was my 'savior'. "Thank you!" I repeated over and over, pressing my body against his.

He stuttered and awkwardly tried to figure out what to do with his hands. "N-no problem, little miss." He laughed. "No problem at all…." He was nervous and with good reason. I hugged him tightly- like a frightened young girl would do in a situation like that- and watched the woman, Makimi-san he had called her, behind his back. The older man, but not much older than myself, that I held patted my hair and I let out some rehearsed sobs to convince him further of my desperation.

"Calm down, now…." He chided me softly and rubbed my back slowly in a motion that was meant to soothe. I peeked into the darkness through my fake tears and watched Sasuke's tall figure approach Makimi-san silently. He was as quiet as a whisper; so quiet that she didn't notice his presence directly behind her until his hand snaked around her to cover her mouth with a fierce force that made me apprehensive for her. Sasuke had promised me they wouldn't feel any pain or fear. He promised they wouldn't have enough time to know what was happening to them.

The woman struggled for a few short seconds before her body became limp in his grasp, her neck contorted gruesomely in a gnarled tilt, after a small cracking sound from her frail body when Sasuke twisted his arms suddenly. I never would have imagined how easy it would be to kill someone until then. He made it look so simple- so quick.

I let out one last sob of sharp cries and followed Sasuke's steps with my eyes as he made his way to the man I was still grasping onto. As soon as he was standing behind the unsuspecting man I immediately let go and pushed myself away. The man looked to me, confused at my sudden change in behavior, but the color in his eyes faded slowly and small spurts of blood leaked from the corner of his mouth until he fell with a dull thud onto the hard earth beneath us. The knife in the Uchiha's hand was stained with red and he chucked it down the side-street he had probably found it in.

The whole game had probably taken six minutes to complete and it was over before I knew it. I was relieved it wasn't as hard as I had thought it would be. I actually found myself feeling slightly elated that I had succeeded in something so depraved and illegal- something so inhuman. I idly realized again how similar to Sasuke I was becoming.

"You did well." Sasuke appraised me with a cheesy thumbs-up and a cheeky smile.

"All those acting lessons as a child came in handy, after all." I sighed and calmed my heart, whipping the false tears from my eyes and trying not to ruin my makeup. I was relieved when I scanned my appearance while Sasuke hid the bodies and saw that the dress was not damaged and my elbow was just a little scraped up. It would only turn out as a bruise, if even that.

"Hmmmm." Sasuke hummed to himself, studying two plastic I.D.s in his hand as he came out of the shadows. I guessed they were from the bodies he searched and disposed of. "It appears that my new name is Hirotsu Midarami…and yours is Makimi Midarami." He looked at me and rubbed his chin in thought. "I guess you're my wife…." He trailed off and scanned my appearance up and down with squinted and judgmental eyes. I straightened my stance slightly in turn of his prodding gaze. "I thought that if I was ever gonna' get hitched that it'd be to someone with bigger breasts…" he frowned then snickered at his own joke when he saw my face. I obviously didn't find his jeering funny.

"We just killed two people. You could at least respect their sacrifice with a moment of silence or something…. Be courteous." I interjected in a lecturing tone, chiding him as if he were a young child.

"Yes, ma'am!" he saluted me with his hand to his forehead like a soldier and led me out of the alley and back into the busy street.

"How do we know these names will work?" I asked, nervous about the possibility that we would be turned away and have to find two more new identities. I didn't know if the small shred of sanity I had left could withstand killing two more people if that happened. He didn't answer my pleading question and just kept walking with me close behind until we reached the door.

"Names?" a burly man in a black, tailored suit asked curtly when we finally made it past the throngs of guests waiting to be accepted in without a listed-name.

"Hirotsu and Makimi Midarami." Sasuke answered calmly, as if it were the utter truth. He could have even convinced _me_ if he wanted or tried. I couldn't believe or understand how cool-headed he was while I was a nervous wreck. The guard was taking forever to find our 'names', flipping from page to page for confirmation, and it seemed like an eternity before he said anything.

"Ah, there you are." He pointed to a slot with our new identities written carefully in pen and I almost let out a relieved breath of air I didn't notice I had been holding up until that moment. "You may go in." he signaled another man by the large doors that pulled the thick handles, opening them effectively. We strode in like we owned the place- I tried my 'graceful walk' and probably failed again utterly while Sasuke carried his usual aura of 'don't-fuck-with-me' and bringing sexy back without concern.

Sasuke whistled lowly, admiring the elaborately decorated ceiling and grand stair-case that lead to a finely-lavished, second story of the mansion. "The things money can buy…." He trailed off in awe. The walls were a semi-white pallor with hints of lavender and the stairs were a finely carved wood that I had never seen before outside of high-end fashion magazines.

"Are you absolutely _sure_ the Minister will be here like your '_very reliable source'_ from this morning said?" I asked, hoping they had been right and we would not have to stay in Suna any longer. Not only did I absolutely _loathe_ the humidity but I was actually looking forward to traveling to Sound Country. I knew that, once there, we would be safe as the Uchiha had promised and that I would no longer need to worry myself about becoming apprehended by the police. There was no doubt in my mind that they were searching for us. The day before, when the Uchiha loony had shot the poor driver in the back of his head, the radio had informed that they had already found the bus in Konoha's desert. I grimaced at the thought.

"If he's not here, I'll track down my 'informant' and kill him." He said loud enough that anyone standing nearby would have heard. I glanced around, but none of the other guests seemed to have overheard and I let out a sigh of relief. The Uchiha's uncaring attitude was going to get us caught! "Let's look around." He said and made his way up the grand stair-case to the top floor.

The party-goers on the second level seemed to all be younger than the attendees downstairs- all around Sasuke's age and my own. We passed by many doors, pushing past the throngs of bodies, some closed and some cracked open only a sliver. I was thankful that there weren't a maze of corridors. It seemed that the lay-out of the halls was fairly simple and wouldn't take us very long to scour.

One room we passed by was playing rap music. "I just wanna' talk and conversate, 'cause usually I just stalk and masturbate." The unfamiliar lyrics rang out through the cracked door to a dark room as the bass thrummed through me, vibrating my ears. Each room seemed to have different songs playing and all the bass meshed together to create one syllable of booming vibration. We made it to the last door and Sasuke opened the crack a little wider, peering in. The song was loud and hurt my head, but I was sure I had heard it before. I was sure it was called '#Stupidfacedd' by Wallpaper. I had heard it a couple times on the radio back in Konoha and the room next to the last was bumping out 'Basshead' by Bassnectar.

"Would the Minister really be up here with people like this?" I asked, eying a couple making out against the corner, three feet away, at the end of the hall.

"I didn't think so, but it's better to check than to overlook." He stated and walked past me without telling me where we were going. I was getting used to that.

We made our way back downstairs to the more civilized party. They music was calmer- 'Georgia on My Mind' by Ray Charles. I felt Sasuke straighten up next to me and I unconsciously did the same. The guests were more eloquent than I had expected and we had to act like them, look like them, to fit in and keep attention from ourselves. I wanted anything _other_ than sticking out like a sore thumb in a place like this with the company that I was keeping.

A waiter passed by with an expensive looking silver salver balanced uniquely on his hand. "Miss." He bowed humbly and offered the tray to me. I captured two glasses of white wine and handed one to Sasuke after the waiter was called to the group of conversing men and women to our right. The Uchiha gave my hand a strange look then rolled his eyes.

When I gave him a dirty look back he pointed discreetly with his free hand to the group that the waiter was now tending to. I watched the way they held their glasses as if they were created with the most delicate of glass and their pinky fingers stuck out slightly. "Hold it like that." He ordered shortly and motioned for me to follow him.

We glided into the next room slowly, with a relaxed haste that we copied off of other guests. I tried to present myself like everyone else, but wasn't very good at it.

The room we entered was filled with men and women wearing the same kind of flashy clothing that we were and holding their own glasses of clear liquid. The women were knit together in small groups- their faces closely pressed together and looking as if telling each other some delicious secrets. They were all tightly clipped and trimmed in their dresses and imperial jewelry. They gave me sour glances as I passed by- probably because of my unusual pink hair- and gossiped when they believed I was far enough away to not hear.

The men were nothing less that prim or proper and some had shorter, thicker glasses in their hands filled with a darker liquid and ice floating at the top. The smell of their drinks aired the room, telling me it was some kind of spiced liquor, and the ice clanked minutely whenever one of them waved their arm in enthusiastic conversation. Their hand gestures were grand as they told boisterous stories, talking so loud like they wanted everyone- even the people not listening- to hear how grand their lives were.

Sasuke seemed disinterested in everything- except the grand piano in the corner- and lead me outside onto the plateau underneath a intruding balcony that lead to a finely handed garden. A large fountain rested at the end of the bitumen plateau with a large, marble statue pouring water from a smooth vase. Behind the fountain lay hundreds of yards of undisturbed land covered in rosebushes and willow trees.

There were only a few people scattering the garden, but their silhouettes were covered by shadows far away and their voices were faint in the distance.

"Hey, you look familiar." the deep, gravelly voice of a man spoke from our left. I turned to see who had spoken, but realized the man wasn't speaking to me, but to Sasuke instead. I caught Sasuke's hand tighten around his wine glass slightly. If one hadn't been paying much attention to his reaction, they would not have noticed. The man who had spoken in the rough timbre was adorned in a long black robe worn over a white collared shirt with a white sash draped over his shoulders. The sash's length reached down to where his knees would have been under the ebony vestment. The man, who I guessed by Sasuke's tensed shoulders and clenched jaw was the Minister, pointed at him and said, as if it were a great realization, "I know you."

"Well, that's unfortunate." Sasuke smiled darkly and his voice was velvet once again- the rigidity of his shoulders and clenched hand eased back to his usual façade and calm pallor after speaking and he let out a deep, calming breath while shaking the Minister's hand.

"Where have we met before?" the Minister asked as if it were an exceedingly enjoyable guessing game. His hair was white and balding and his eyelids were sagging with age. He appeared to be about sixty years old, but I wasn't entirely sure. "Was it in Church? Yes, at the Cathedral!" he snapped his fingers and waited for the Uchiha's answer.

"I'm quite sure not, Minister. I have not attended church for a very long while. Not since my family was alive…" Sasuke trailed off and the minister appraised him, setting his drink on a nearby, unoccupied stool close to them. The glass clanked loudly against the find wood and I idly wondered if there would be rings of water stains after setting it down without a coaster. "Is this your son?" Sasuke asked to try and change the subject, pointing to the young blond man standing just behind the Minister's back.

"Yes, it is." He was about to turn to said man behind him and say something.

I shifted uncomfortably at the situation and my movement seemed to distract the Ministers attentions from Sasuke and the blond man. "And who, may I ask, is this lovely specimen?" the man's tone was slightly lecherous as he grabbed my hand and placed a chaste kiss to the back of it. I gave him a strained smile and silently pleaded him in my mind to get away from me.

"Ah, yes. I don't believe I have introduced you to my wife, Makimi Midarami." Sasuke gestured to me.

"Midarami? That sounds oddly familiar…" the man rubbed his chin, trying to relocate the mnemonic.

"I'm _sure_ it does." Sasuke joked to himself. The Minister was unaware of the meaning in his 'innocent' words but I wasn't. I could only hope the Minister wouldn't remember just _why_ such a name sounded familiar and realize that we were not who we pretended to be.

"Makimi." Sasuke called to me softly. It took me a second to realize he was referring to me in my sobriquet.

"Yes, Hirotsu?" I played along and made my voice as sweet sounding as possible, like the women inside sounded.

"Why don't you relax inside, Dear, and gossip with the other ladies?" he turned to me and used his eyes to glance towards the exit, letting me know it wasn't a suggestion like it had sounded when he had said it. I gave him a straight stare.

"Yes, _Dear_." I tried to sound doting, but it was hard when speaking through gritted teeth. For some reason he didn't want me around when he talked to the Minister, and I could understand why- this was a private matter- but I didn't want to go inside with the women's stares again.

I grudgingly trudged back into the soiree and rested myself against a bare wall, watching the people pass by and sipping my wine. Time always seemed to go by all too slowly when you're waiting with nothing to do. I could not talk to the other guests because I didn't know what I could possible say. I was sure if I spoke to them or even _tried_ to start polite conversation that they would realize immediately, due to my lack in elocution, that I was not 'one of them'.

So, I decided that he safest place for me to be was against the very same wall I had been attached to for the last fifteen minutes. I sent nervous glances at the large clock on the opposite wall of the large, noisy room every few seconds and ran the tip of my finger around the rim of my empty glass repeatedly to give myself something to do for a distraction. I was staring longingly at the minute-hand of the Victorian clock for the millionth time when a tall figure planted himself lackadaisically against the wall right next to me, directly to my left. I scooted away slightly more to the corner to my right to keep myself away from his close proximity. I knew without looking who it was. Sasuke always carried a certain air about him that could not be confused with any other man.

"You look like a lost little kitten." He stated, looking into the crowd just as I was with one leg bent at the knee and propped on the wall behind him with his hands in his pockets and his head resting back on the wallpaper. He was completely relaxed with no reason to be so.

"Don't talk to me." I spat.

"Ouch! Feisty…." He squirmed as if pretending my words had any effect on him at all and made him itch. "So…" he started off and I scowled at nothing in particular in his complete lack of following y order of shutting up. "Do you want to hear the bad news first or the okay-but-still-not-great-news?" he turned his body to me, leaning his right shoulder against the wall with his hands still in his pockets and an aloof expression on his aristocratic features..

"How many times will I have to repeat myself?" I asked incredulously. "I don't wish to speak to you right now." I said each word separately like he was a four year old.

"Then allow me to re-word my previous question…" he put his fist to his mouth and cleared his throat before continuing. "Do you want to hear how the cops are hot on our trail or the play-by-play of how I just ripped the Minister's throat out?" He waited only a few short seconds to let his words sink in. Then, when I didn't give him any reply, he said, "Great party, by the way, isn't it?" He raised his eyebrows shortly and lifted his glass in a one-sided 'cheers' gesture before walking away nonchalantly into the crowd of unsuspecting people.

It took me a few minutes to collect my scattered, shocked thoughts then I stomped my way around the large flat of people until I found him at the bar, conversing innocently with the Minister's son of all people!

"Give me a Scotch, I'm starving!" he told the bartender, slamming his left hand on the counter to rouse her attention. He turned back to the Minister's son with an agreeing smile and I grabbed his arm roughly and pulled him away to the side of the room so that none of the guests would hear us. The raven haired man's glass of dark liquor danced in his diaphanous glass with my rough-handling- some of the scotch almost splashing out onto the purely white carpet.

"You killed the Minister!"

"He had it commin'." He waved his hand flippantly, as if it were some small matter. "Why did you think we were looking for him?"

"I'm being serious! You said we 'needed to see the Sinister of Suna because he was a friend'!" I whispered harshly, deepening my voice to sound like him, and trying not to gain any attention. "This is extremely illegal- even for you!"

"No need to be snarky about it." He chided, not taking me seriously at all.

I grabbed the ridge of my nose to hard that I was sure it would break to collect my thoughts and calm myself. "We need to dispose of the body." I stated the obvious after a moment and gave him my best 'and-don't-you-even-think-about-saying-no' glare. "Where did you leave it at?"

He led me back to the garden behind the bitumen plateau again. He pointed to the shadows at something and walked onto the soft grass in his black, shiny shoes. I followed suit until he stopped just in front of some shrubbery. I searched around the cultivated plants and the hidden paths in the darkness of the shadows to make sure nobody was around to catch us.

He walked through the shrub, without caring if he ripped his pants or not on the thorns, and dragged something heavy a few feet out of the security of the hiding spot. The Minister's mangled body was still dressed in his celestial attire but when Sasuke had said that he _ripped his throat out_ he wasn't joking. The man's throat was completely missing.

"Where is it?" I interrogated the raven haired man squatting next to the corpse with this arms resting limply on his knees. He blinked at me a few times and stood. He seemed to know that I was asking about the chunk of flesh missing from the man's body. He lifted his foot slightly off the grass and nudged something with the toe of his shoe that I couldn't see in the shadows, but it sounded squishy and squelched when his shoe made contact with it. I didn't need to see it to know that it was the man's esophagus. The red blood on the Uchiha's shoe once he pulled away was enough proof for me.

I didn't ask any more questions. "What should we do with him?" I asked and Sasuke smiled widely.

* * *

><p><strong>DAY FIVE<strong>

The desert was still as hot as it had been two days before and the sun was about to rise.

I had asked him after a long silence why he had done it- killed the Minister. I didn't understand how he could kill someone whose existence required pious action. I only got a short, curt reply of, "He was the man who committed me into the hospital all those years ago…..Besides! The party needed some _excitement_!" he did his little eye-wagging expression that he always when he said something inappropriate and knew I couldn't do anything to punish him for it.

The clock on the dashboard of the car said it was just past 4:00 a.m.. The party was probably still going but when Sasuke suggested we bury the body in the desert, I guessed it was because he thought it would be some kind of a heart-felt reunion.

"You and I met in a desert, Sakura. Therefore, we will bury him in the desert _together_." He had supplied his reasoning. So, I didn't argue because I couldn't think of anywhere better than a dune of sand. I just didn't like the way he said it; like he was saying goodbye. It was like he thought this was the last thing we would do together so he was stressing the importance of burying him _with_ each other. I knew it would be ridiculous of me to believe that he would let me tag around with him forever, and I didn't think that for one second- I knew better than to delude myself with such thoughts, but I thought that we would at least be together for a little while after making it to Sound Country. I had thought that once we were safe there that he would find it to be the most opportune time to kick me out of the car and speed off to do whatever it was that he was going to do as a free man. I silently hoped to myself that I was imagining his goodbye insinuations.

We had jacked a better car from the parking lot, a slick and black Mercedes, and were driving at top speed through the sand roads. I looked to the Uchiha to see his face, but it was void as always. I don't know how long I watched him but, like before, he didn't say anything or tell me to stop if he noticed my gaze. I watched him until I noticed a glint of emotion on his face.

He glared at the radio and snatched his hand out to turn the volume knob up, listening carefully to a man's voice.

_"…..police have discovered the hideout of the two serial…."_ It was hard to hear over the static, but I immediately knew what the news broadcaster would say next. _"Suna Villa Hotel room after murdering Hiroku Tatsuhara. The two were believed to have taken refuge in his hotel room after….."_ the static cut out the next few words. _"…Body was found in the garbage chute this morning and the police believe that the murder was tied to the strings of killings of three bus guards, two Suna citizens, and a gas station clerk. The first four of which were committed in Konoha's desert just off Highway 67…Police believe that the trail is only becoming easier to follow and that the suspects will soon be under arrest….."_

"Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, FUCK!" Sasuke yelled beside me, startling me with his sudden fierceness, and repeatedly banged the steering wheel with each expletive that escaped off from his tongue.

"You're acting a little crazy, Sasuke. It's just a minor setback." I reassured him but he gave me a glare that showed he wasn't buying it for one second. "Could you please try to not break the car and help me get the body out of the trunk? The sun is going to rise soon and I don't want to be digging a hole in the blistering heat."

"You're a twisted one, aren't you." He asked with amusement painting his lips and dripping from his tongue. His moods curved from pissed to irrational to intrigued so fast they were like balls bounding around his head. I could never keep up with its swings.

"That's ironic coming from you, Mr. 'I-kill-political-figure-heads-because-I'm-bored'!"

"Touché. Just make sure it's six feet this time, woman. I'm thorough, if nothing else, so don't screw it up." He was more stressed out about the whole cop thing that I had thought.

"That's too bad. I do love screwing." I sighed and he smirked.

* * *

><p>After burying the body I had whined repeatedly until Sasuke gave in and agreed to find somewhere to sleep, other than the car. I was covered in sweat from the labor of digging so much heavy, brittle sand and was glad for a shower. We had passed right by Suna Village and he chose a motel that was conveniently in-between Suna Village and Sound Village.<p>

The motel was called Shore Inn, but the 'h' was missing so it ended up spelling 'sore' instead. It was cheap and the carpet smelled like old, sour potatoes but at least it had running water and air-conditioning.

I walked out of the bathroom, clean and refreshed, to find Sasuke resting in a chair in front of the large, curtained window. The shutters were shut but there was a small amount of light from the bathroom shining into the room to allow me to see him. He was sitting with his legs spread and relaxed, hands clasped behind his head, and rear scooted forward so he could slouch his back against the back rest of the chair.

"I wonder what the families are thinking at the funerals….if they want you dead or are too mournful to care about you. I wonder what they would say to you if you were there…." I dried my hair with the brown towel from the small cupboard, not saying it but he knew that I was talking about the people he killed.

"I didn't attend the funeral but I sent a well-written letter saying that I approved of it." He argued on behalf of himself as if he were solidly rational, though he knew himself to be wrong and immoral. He was always the devil's advocate in any discussion because morality made him itch. He told me it had been that way for as long as he could remember. He guessed he was born that way.

We didn't talk for the rest of the time that it took me to brush the rats out of my hair. Sasuke seemed to be thinking about something very hard and he studied me with ultimate concentration. He never moved; like a statue.

After a moment Sasuke laughed loudly at a silent thought in his own warped mind, uncaring if he seemed strange or frightening in such an unusual human gesture. It seemed he would never be able to behave properly because he didn't even purposely act insane. There was no attempt on his part in being the image of the perfect lunatic in the imaginations of others- and I didn't mean that in good way, or bad. He was, indeed, the ultimate psychopath and ideal sociopath for he did not care or feel any remorse whatsoever. I would easily believe his only good, somewhat-human deed was in offering me to go with him that day at the bus. He saved me from death in that desert and he could have easily chosen not to. I bet myself he wouldn't have lost a wink of sleep over it either. He most likely would have coughed out a cackling laugh and praised himself for his devilish ways while playing elevator music in the distant background.

I mused over this thought, pleased with my latest divulge into his vast psyche, and jumped into the only bed in the room. I didn't know why Sasuke had gotten only a one-bed room when he could have gotten one with two beds for the same price. But, I was exhausted from everything that had happened in the past four days and didn't think too much of it. I pulled the covers up to my chin and fanned my damp hair over the pillow behind me.

"Aren't you going to sleep?" I asked, whispering through the dark to him. He was still sitting in the chair, looking at me.

"I'm fine right here." His voice was velvet again and I drifted off to sleep short after.

* * *

><p>I woke up to the bed jostling with the weight of another body. I tried to open my eyes, but something was obscuring my view- a piece of fabric around my head- but I could tell it was daytime because a small amount of light was shining through the cloth. A pair of large hands grabbed my left wrist and held it to the headboard of the bed against the wall. I attempted to move my right hand to stop the strange grip but it was stuck, tied by something, and my left was being tied as well. I wasn't strong enough to break the strong hand's hold before it, too, was strapped down with what felt like torn fabric. The strings hanging from where it was torn tickled my wrists whenever I tried to break free.<p>

"Sasuke?" I called out in a shaky voice to the unknown, unseen room.

"Hn." was all he said to let me know it was him. I immediately felt a rush of relief at his voice. It sounded like he was close and I guessed he was standing at the side of the bed.

My heart was racing and I felt my chest moving erratically with my over-worked breathing. It felt like I just ran ten miles. _This is it…._ I thought to myself in pity. I was sure he was going to kill me now. He got what he was looking for since the beginning, the Minister, and now he didn't need me anymore. He wasn't the kind of man to drag along something that was of no use to him. He liked to 'travel light'. I scrunched my eyes together, waiting for the final blow.

"What are you doing?" I exhaled and inhaled deeply to try and calm myself when I waited for him to kill me. But it never came.

"I'm sorry, but this is for your own good." He left it short and to-the-point again.

"What?" I cried out and he hushed me.

"The police will be here in a few hours, Sakura." He explained. "When they find you, tell them you were my hostage." His voice was flat, but strained. "Tell them you were blind-folded, so you don't know where you are, and you don't know where I'm going." He finished and I heard his feet skim the carpeting, making their way to the door.

I heard the door creak open and felt a flood of heat wave in from outside onto my skin, battling the cool air of the room. "Where _are_ you going?" I asked, frightened. I didn't want to be left alone. I wanted to go with him.

"The only place I'll be safe." And then he walked out the door. I could hear it shut softly and the light that shone in through my blind-fold cut off immediately when it closed completely. He was going to Suna and leaving me there, I realized. I had been right earlier that day when I had thought I heard a goodbye in his words. How long had he been planning this for? How long had he been deceiving me for, making me think I was going to Sound with him, I wondered? The question rolled around my head, repeating itself and repeating itself.

* * *

><p>It wasn't long before the police found me, strapped to a head-board, and cut me free. They hauled me into a large truck and handcuffed me on the way back to Konoha. We made no stops and there were no breaks in their questioning. They said that it was of the utmost importance to find out where he was heading and that they needed to question me effective immediately. They interrogated me in the dark truck with the tinted windows and bench-like, metal seats.<p>

I told them what Sasuke had said. I was a hostage. They believed me so easily because I had been bound and blinded. They saw it as reasonable evidence to trust my false words.

I told them I was blinded with the fabric, so I couldn't see his face. I didn't remember what he looked like and I didn't know where we had gone or how many people he had killed. I said that he had never spoken to me; therefore, I couldn't possibly know for sure where he was going. I lied and said that I heard him talking on a phone about going to Mist Village.

The only time I told the truth was then they had asked my why he had kept _me_ alive- out of all the others. "I don't know." I had whispered.

They deemed me an un-creditable suspect/witness and let me free to return to my life. Doctor Kura, the therapist from the mental hospital that oversaw Sasuke, was arrested and sentenced to ten years in prison for bribery and, basically, letting loose such a 'lunatic' in the first place. The detectives saw it as the doctor's fault that Sasuke was released into the world. They said that it was irresponsible of him to allow his patients to travel without proper supervision and his actions had caused the deaths of approximately eight people.

I knew it was ten, though, and they had goofed up in their information somewhere. I would remember them all for the rest of my life; the three guards, the gas station clerk, the two drivers in the desert, the man at the hotel, the two in the alley (Makimi and Hirotsu Midarami), and the Minister. Sasuke had killed 74 people, all-together.

He had saved me, in his own little way. Did that mean that, even though he denied and hated it, there was still a small shred of humanity in him? And the bigger question was, how can you love someone you've never kissed, hugged, or really knew? But I did.

I loved him so much that I was willing to go to prison to stay with him. So much that I was willing to give up my own humanity to be with him- to understand him.

I shook my thoughts from my head and entered my boss's office. The door was heavy, ensuring that voices would not travel outside of its barrier, but I somehow made it in and sat in the green seat set in front of the desk.

I was accepted back at my old job after the failed interrogation by the police and I was found innocent, just as Sasuke had planned. It was sedentary compared to how used to life as a criminal I had become. Things that used to excite me seemed to not entertain or keep my mind occupied anymore. I was used to 'Sasuke life', as I called it. Too used.

"Sakura." Tsunade, whom I worked for, cleared her throat.

"Hm?"

"I know that what you were put through must have been traumatic….I can't begin to imagine…." She shifted in her seat and leaned forward on the desk, knitting her fingers together under her chin. "I'm worried about you." Her eyebrows tied together by an invisible string when she spoke. Her words seemed to have to falsities and she seemed to be genuinely concerned.

"What do you mean?" I inquired curiously.

"You don't seem yourself here anymore and I am certain that it is this atmosphere." He cleared her throat again and crossed her legs under her desk. "There is a doctor who is hiring Psychologists and had I think that you would be perfect for the job." I tried to argue when she finished but she cut me off. "Consider it some kind of vacation, Sakura. If you don't like the new working atmosphere or your new boss you can come back here. But just give it a try, okay?" she was almost begging.

I sucked in a deep breath, knowing that even if I said no she would still send me away, and nodded in approval. "Where is it?"

"Sound Village. You'll be working for some guy that goes by the name of _Hirotsu Midarami_."

I smiled.

End.

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><p>Please review. I need the inspiration to continue. XD<p> 


	4. Absolutely Nothing

I do not own Naruto.

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><p><strong>Absolutely Nothing<strong>

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><p>The walls are endless in their abandonment. There is no trace of anything ever hanging on them. There is no cleaner pallor in the form of a square shape where a picture could have once rested upon the paint. The floors hold no emotion or memory. There have never been any feet to explore its barren form. Utter cleanliness. Profoundly white.<p>

There are no flaws or almost undetectable specks of color in the linoleum, even as I kneel down to interrogate the tiles to only find what I had expected. Nothing. Purity. No hues or tones of even an off-white shade.

Color is a phenomenon of light and perception. It allows one to differentiate otherwise identical objects, just like a shadow does. There was neither shadow nor color.

White is a monochrome. White is complete.

"Are you looking for something?" A voice reverberates through the room. The body is somewhere inexistent to the eye.

"Anything." I answer.

"It is not here."

And I realize with fear that the words are nothing but fruitless as well. Fear is our strongest emotion- it is instinctual to avoid. In this place that is not a place, with a person that is not a person, and a nothing that is not anything, it is of the utmost importance to realize that the walls themselves are not there. In such a place, you convince yourself that nothing exists. Nothing has ever existed before that moment. That moment is all there is and it cannot be expanded to last any longer than a moment lasts. Everything- a table, a tree, a body- is a figment of imagination.

The voice trails not a thing behind it other than unfathomable silence. There was never an adequate enough word ever created to clarify such an absence of what had started as nothing. Silence has now presented its foreboding tendency. When sound disrupts you, reticence cradles you.

In a way so recurring that it was almost profound, the death of something that was never constructed hit into my thoughts in consistent waves of extinguished volume.

My ears begin to ring, but it is neither a noise either. It is only blood flowing through, pushed by a pounding and insatiable beating in my chest.

I stare back to the wall and am over-thwarted with the sensation that I am falling sideways, but I do not know which side I will land on. I cannot define where I stand, whether it is the wall or the ceiling. I cannot perceive in my mind if there _is_ a ceiling. The unseen's words vibrate, never-ending, in the back of my eyes where they connect to my brain and I feel as if there is a cage rattling. The words are trying to break free and return to the stranger's throat.

The floor seems to be slipping further and further from beneath me like I am drifting two feet above myself, watching intently for the next move I will make. I do not even know what it will be.

_It was not the feeling of completeness I so needed, but the feeling of not being empty._ Jonathan Safran Foer said that once, I recall.

Perhaps he was in this room as well once. Perhaps he had once stood here. It must have taken the fathoming of the depths of everything to create nothing. The feeling of nothingness is what is most frightening of all and most are not even aware of such a fact until they are presented with such a pantheon of absence.

Emptiness is form. Emptiness is etiquette; a human condition, just as loneliness is unavoidable.

The more closely you look at something the more you see that it is not there in any substantial way. Emptiness is freedom. It is a deconstruction of reality.

And reality never even existed.

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><p>sorry if it's not up to par with expectations. I've been completely submerged ever since college semesters started back up again.<p> 


	5. We Were Team Seven Part 1  REVISED

I do not own Naruto or the characters- only the plots to my stories. I do not own the song at the beginning, either. It belongs to Edith Piaf and is called _Tu Es Partout_.

**_I noticed a lot of mistakes and "Time change Bars" missing so i edited it and put them in. Maybe now it is able to be understood. I didn't mean to upload it, i did by accident after confusing it with another chapter. It wasn't ready yet, but i guess now it is so...enjoy!_**

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><p>While You Were Out<br>Chapter 7

We Were Team Seven (Part 1)

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><p><em>I see you everywhere in the sky,<br>I see you everywhere on the earth,  
>You are my joy and my sun,<br>My nights, my days, my clear dawns._

_You are everywhere, because you are in my heart,  
>You are everywhere, because you are my happiness,<br>Everything that is around me,  
>Even life does not represent you,<br>Sometimes I dream that I am in your arms,  
>And you speak softly in my ear.<em>

_You tell me things that make my eyes close,  
>and I find that marvelous.<em>

_Maybe one day you will return,  
>I know that my heart waits for you,<br>You cannot forget me,  
>Or the past days we spent together.<em>

_My eyes never stop searching for you,  
>Listen well, my heart calls you,<br>We can love each other again,  
>And you'll see that life will be beautiful.<em>

* * *

><p>"Ugh!" Naruto barked out in a loud groan for the umpteenth time that day. "How much loooongeeer?" he whined. Team Seven had been traveling for the last two days in the blistering heat wave of mid-June. They had finally reached the Fire Country border and were walking the winding dirt path to the small town that rested between Fire and Sound territories. It was called, ironically, Border Town. Because it lay so uncharacteristically on each country's land, the town was said to be split across the divide with one side belonging strictly to Fire and the other for Sound. Their mission, specifically, was to aid a distressed client whose house lay next to the crossing. Her husband, a renowned judge, had passed away recently and her family was potentially in danger from assailants.<p>

It goes without saying that her husband had made a lot of enemies before his untimely death. Many of the ninja and criminals on the Sound territory of the small town were convicted by the judge and rumors hinted that he was perhaps a little too harsh with his punishments. The case he was most widely known for was some long years ago. A rapist, Sakura had forgotten his name, was sentenced to ten years in prison by the judge. The only reason the pinkette knew this was because the news even reached Konoha. She could remember her mother talking about "that man" whenever she watched the news, disgusted. In Konoha, rape was never heard of; and if it was, it had happened in a different hidden village. It was still extremely rare and, therefore, ultimately frightening. She could remember how repulsed Kakashi-sensei, Naruto, and Sasuke were by such far away news- even as Genin.

The sentencing was the longest condemnation listed to a rapist in Fire Country history. Most rape criminals received up to only four or five years. Rumors also had it that the sentencing was so strict, because it was also biased. It was gossip that the judge ruled unfairly over the case because it was his own wife who had been attacked. In such a small town, the judge was unquestioned for his motives. The villagers were just pleased that the man was off the streets and rested assured that their own families were safe. Though it was unprofessional to let personal feelings objectify and cloud his judgments, Sakura could see where he came from. If it was her family, Sakura would have done the same with all that power so easily at her disposal. But, the problem was that nobody truly knew if it really was his wife or not. The identity of the victim was kept under closure for personal protection, on personal request.

"Let's make camp here. Tomorrow we'll be at the town so get some rest. Naruto, you take first watch tonight." Kakashi-sensei announced and headed towards the east side of the small clearing to lay out his pack and sleeping bag. They were all exhausted and would have to take turns throughout the night to watch the others while they rested. Sakura was thankful that she would have the opportunity to sleep the entire night. She had taken Naruto's watch time and her own as well the night before, so she was just about ready to drop at any moment.

Naruto patted her on the back, silently thanking her and urging her on toward her sleeping spot. She skipped dinner in favor of her sleeping bag without a second thought. As soon as her head met the pillow she was falling into a deep slumber, but it seemed only a few short seconds later it was morning and the sun was shining through the trees boughs above. She could smell breakfast roasting over the fire a few feet behind her.

"Mm." she mumbled sleepily, rubbing her tired eyes. "Why didn't you wake me?" she yawned.

"We're earlier to our destination than expected. Besides, you needed some recuperation time." Kakashi-sensei mused, turning a page of his book with his index finger. He sounded as if there was some joke she wasn't getting.

"Yeah, Sakura-chan! You were snoring like a cow!" the blond interjected. "You only do that when you're _reeaally_ tired!-"

"I don't snore!" I objected, embarrassed. "And cows don't either. They sleep while standing, idiot."

"You kept us up all night!" he went on, laughing and holding his stomach for dear life.

"Shut up, Naruto!" she wacked him hard enough to make him choke on his grilled fish. Normally Sakura would not become so hostile about something so infantile- but she was easily rattled with such things while in the presence of the fourth member of Team Seven. The last Uchiha didn't seem to be listening but, if she was snoring in front of him, she didn't want to know about it. _'Ignorance is bliss….'_ The rosette thought quietly.

She watched said raven-haired man out of her peripheral vision. She caught herself doing this often. Whenever he was around her, her palms seemed to sweat, her skin felt clammy and her heart stilled- making time seem to go uncomfortably slow. She blamed her damn Autonomic Nervous System for his effect on her body.

She suddenly lost her appetite. Her stomach was too clenched while around him to eat without the threat of purging. She decided instead to repack her belongings for the short trip that would take them to the town.

"You need to eat something, Sakura-chan, you're too skinny." Naruto worried aloud, causing the attention of her other two teammates to assault her. It was true that she had lost a little weight recently, but it was nothing taxing or drastic; she was just naturally small with a svelte figure. Besides, as a medic, she would know when she was too unhealthy. She was 100 pounds exactly, which was the average weight of a kunoichi her age. She had just turned twenty, three weeks prior to the mission, and at the short height of 5'4" she was the picture of health. A kunoichi was to be small for their duties. Espionage was difficult when you couldn't fit into a tight space. This was why female ninja were the information seekers in the teams. Their small stature was hard for enemies to spot and, the smaller the spy, the more difficult it was to be involuntarily apprehended.

Naruto would always talk like that and cause concern. He had always been a worrywart…. It wasn't that he thought she was really sick or starved herself- he had always tried to stuff her with as much food as possible. _"You won't be able to win a fight if you're so small!"_ Naruto used to say, but she couldn't help it. She wouldn't be able to gain weight if she tried.

All three members of her team had become increasingly protective of her over the years after Sasuke's return; and after that little outburst from Naruto on the training field, they had all become overly concerned with her _eating habits_. She guessed it was because it was the first time they realized how small and diminutive she really was compared to them. They were all at least a head taller than her and twice her size by then when they were seventeen. At first their worrying and fondling over her was annoying, but now she found it to be normal. They were her teammates- worrying was their job.

She could understand it perfectly now. If she was a male ninja she would also be concerned for the only female on the team; especially when that female was like a little sister (team seven was like a small family to the three men).

In Konoha this was just how women were treated; gender roles had not died. It wasn't that the men believed that the women were incapable of strength- just that women were, overall, smaller than men and therefore the men took it as their responsibility to protect. It was instinctual.

Konoha's views hadn't changed much from when it was first established (even with a female Hokage), but women were at the same time respected on the battlefield as equals. It was gruesome respect and realization of frailty.

Still, warfare and manual labor generally fell to men, and home-centered tasks such as cooking and child-care tended to be work for women. Societies naturally assigned roles reflecting men's and women's physical characteristics. With their greater size and strength, men hunt and protect the herd and, because women give birth, they do most of the work in the home. It wasn't sexist; it was just how it was. The men were taught at a young age to respect women because that was how it had always been. It would never change and the society of Konoha liked it that way. It was familiar.

Sakura couldn't say that for other shinobi villages though. There had been a counter-revolution in other such territories outside of Konoha land and now the Fire Country seemed to be the only living proof that chivalry was indeed not dead.

Some villages saw this as weakness while others struggled with the revolution still. The women of the world apparently wanted men to stop "treating them differently". Sakura didn't understand it. She quite liked it when a man would open the door for her and respectfully stand from a dinner table when she entered the room. There wasn't anything demeaning about it, in her opinion, just because she was a woman.

"I don't feel very well this morning. I'll eat later, I promise." She gave Naruto a small smile that always served to convince him. He turned back to his fish and Kakashi went back to his porn. From the corner of her eye she would see Sasuke Staring her down. She turned and pretended not to notice, but she had always been an awful actor and he had always been able to detect her false smiles.

* * *

><p>The walk into the small village was silent and seemed to take forever to pass through the gates. The town, though small in both size and population, was bustling with families journeying to the markets for the day's meals. It was another traditional, old-fashioned Konoha town of civilians where the men worked and the women cooked. I couldn't comprehend how the women could do something so rudimentary each day, but this was because I was so used to the thrills of battle. I would never be able to be so stagnant in life now after my experiences up to that point.<p>

The team trekked through the loosening crowds. I would many times notice people staring; and then remember that Sasuke was beautiful. It surprised me still at times that I could forget such a thing, but I had always been aware of how he unconsciously presented himself. He obviously didn't care about his appearance; I observed the apparent fact, because he never brushed his hair- though it still looked silky to the touch. I wondered idly if it was still as soft as when we were Genin and I had gently raked my hands through his hair in the Forest of Death. After Orochimaru had bitten him, he had sought the comfort of my lap.

The team had grown up in front of my eyes. Well, Naruto had. Sasuke had given that opportunity to that Orochimaru-bastard. Both of them had lost the baby-ness in their faces and had grown their hair a little longer. Naruto truly resembled his father, the Yondaime, now. I many times caught women staring at him as well. I never thought Naruto would become a man for I had always pictured him as a child still, but he surprised me by proving me wrong. But, as it went, the Uchiha stopped conversation wherever he journeyed.

I shook my head and withdrew from my thoughts. My hands were sweaty again.

We had passed the busiest part of town and were standing in front of the house that was explained in the mission scroll. The house was a few hundred feet from the market and all the other homes, ensuring privacy.

When the mission statement said the house lay right next to the boundary line of Sound, it wasn't exaggerating. It was literally almost touching it. There was no actual or visible line between the boundaries, but a child would have been easily able to point it out. The house must have been built around the time of the Third Hokage's reign and some years later the line must have been created when sound established itself as a separate village.

The client's house was the last structure before the line, for it had no neighbors, and it was beautiful- to say the least. Its siding was a faded yellow- a good kind of faded- and the porch wrapped around the entire first story with white marble pillars keeping the balance. The second story's windows were each as big as my sliding-glass balcony door at my apartment in Konoha. The house contrasted painfully with the house closest on Sound's side. All of the structures on that hemisphere looked like small warehouses with busted, boarded-up windows, graffiti, litter covering the non-existent lawns, and some houses (if you could call them that) were so unfortunate to not even have the protection of a front door. It was clear which side struggled with poverty, but it didn't seem to be particularly dangerous.

Sasuke grabbed my arm- effectively holding me back from joining Naruto and Kakashi-sensei on the porch as they knocked loudly upon the door.

I turned to him, perplexed- confusion covering my face. Sasuke never normally touched me when it wasn't absolutely necessary in battle. "Sakura," he spoke lowly so as not to catch the others' attention. "Don't cross the border on your own. Make sure one of us is with you if you must." He let his hand drop from my arm when he finished his orders.

"Why? We're on a mission, Sasuke, and the enemy is on Sound Territory. I can't just-"

"Yes you can. Trust me." He cut me off with his repute as if it were an obviously simple task. His mouth was a grim, strong line. He wasn't looking at me when he continued; his gaze was fixated over my left shoulder towards the small "warehouses". "I know Sound, Sakura….let's just leave it at that." He walked away when a feminine voice spoke from behind the screen door. I was going to ask him to be more specific with what the hell he was talking about, but he was already at the porch with the others.

"Oh!" the woman behind the shaded screen door exclaimed. "You must be who we've been waiting for!" she smiled kindly. "Well, you'd have to be. You don't look anything like Sound ninja." She laughed at some inside joke. "Come in! Don't just stand outside!" she waved us into the door with her hands and led us into the living room, telling us to sit down and make ourselves at home.

She was the kind of woman that aged gracefully. In the mission statement it listed that she was forty-two years old but she didn't look a day over thirty. Her chestnut-auburn hair was down to her waist and the delicate waves seemed to make it look like it was in motion, even when she was still. Her eyes were a dark green- the kind that shined even when in the shaded house; and her skin was a light brown with hints of red. Perhaps she was part Indian?

Her breasts were also larger than mine. I frowned at this- not that I was particularly self-conscious about my chest size, but I was constantly overshadowed by Tsunade-sama in that department. I was certain that, sooner or later, it would give me a complex.

"I hope your travel wasn't too troublesome…" the woman awkwardly started conversation. "I'm Yue, as you already know…" she scratched her arm nervously.

"Ah, yes. I am Hatake Kakashi. This is Uzumaki Naruto, Uchiha Sasuke, and Haruno Sakura." Kakashi gestured towards the team and me as he introduced. The atmosphere lifted after that, and I was relieved. The woman's nervousness was beginning to make me nervous as well.

Yue-san went on to explain her problem in detail considering that the scrolls and treatise from Tsunade-sama only gave us the general idea. She explained that, every few weeks or so, approximately five ninja from Sound would break over the border and into her property to steal from her along with terrifying the village. She had hired help before, three other ninja, but the enemy must have known because they didn't come again until the ninja left. That was when they broke her son's arm in three places to teach her a lesson; One break for each hired ninja. An eye for an ear, I guess you could say. It frightened her enough to suck up her pride and listen to the villagers along with admitting to herself that she needed help before someone lost a life. She sounded ashamed that it took her child's injury to realize the severity of the situation.

'_So, that was why Tsunade-shishou sent a four-man squad. Five ninja will be difficult to handle, depending on their ranks.'_ I pondered as the woman spoke.

"Have they done anything besides thievery and the apparent abuse to your son? Defacing of property, other acts of violence…anything at all?..." Kakashi-sensei asked. It was a routine question on missions like this.

"Oh, no! Of course not! The general in charge of the border does his job well…" Yue-san smiled, waving her hand at Kakashi. I glimpsed Sasuke's skeptically raised brow. He obviously did not believe her, but he never believed anybody in particular.

"Obviously not, if he couldn't catch five men crossing it." The raven-haired man mumbled so low that only I got the gist of what he said. I, therefore, elbowed him in the rib to warn him to behave, which earned a glare, but he quelled his grumbles all the same.

The rest of the day passed quickly. Yue-san made a home-cooked buffet of Sashimi, Yakizakana, Yakisoba, Oten, Miso Soup, and Donburi- claiming that we deserved it; to stock up on energy for our hired purpose. "Do you have any ramen?" Naruto asked Yue-san and got an elbow in the rib of his own as well. "Never mind…" he grumbled.

Yue-san spoke about her son and daughter while we ate; how they were towards strangers, how they were, momentarily, with their aunt until the next morning, and the rules of the house. There was a room at the end of the hall under the stairs that no one was allowed to enter. "My husband's things are still in there and I haven't been able to bring myself to look at it yet. It's still too soon." She had explained when she received a few strange stares, seeming as if she didn't like speaking of his death- which was understandable.

Also, the windows facing the Sound lands were to _never_ have their curtains drawn open, the children were not allowed upstairs, and then there were a few other rules that were more general and easier to recall.

Yue-san toured us through the house and showed us our rooms upstairs. She only stayed a moment then decided to go down and clean up the dinner dishes, leaving us to get ourselves situated. I felt the next day was going to be busy, so I showered as quickly as possible to rid myself of all the dried sweat and grunge I had retained on my skin. I fell into the bed afterwards with great relish.

* * *

><p>I woke up groggily in the morning, but more rested than I had been in quite a long time. Today we were going to try and find information on our enemy in the Sound Lands. Information was the bread and butter of any mission. Without it there are always troubles or deaths later on. Without it, it was like blindfolding yourself in battle. The identity of your enemy is a must have.<p>

I padded down the stairs and planted myself silently on a kitchen stool. I didn't know how but breakfast was already set out and prepared for the team. Did this woman ever sleep? "I'm an extra-early riser." Yue-san sighed gently, noticing my curiosity. It wasn't often that I found someone who woke up earlier than me. I had to admit that I enjoyed awaking to a hot meal for once.

"Thank you. It's delicious." I closed my eyes and enjoyed the sensation of the egg-yolk trickling down my throat.

"It's no trouble. I've been cooking for so long that I have adapted to enjoying it." I laughed at the wide, childlike expression in her eyes as she leaned towards me over the island table. She reminded me of my mother (before the divorce).

"Eugh! What's so funny?" Naruto wondered as he followed Sasuke and Kakashi-sensei into the kitchen. It goes without saying, the whiskered boy was the only one not dressed yet. Kakashi-sensei and Sasuke began to dig in immediately while Naruto seemed to still regret not packing his instant ramen.

"So, Kaka-sensei," I began after swallowing a perfectly seasoned slice of bacon. He had grown used to the nickname recently. "What's on the agenda for today? How do you want us to get this information?" I wanted to know as soon as possible so I could prepare myself and create a mental picture in my mind.

He coughed awkwardly and took a few gulps of his orange juice. "About that…" He scratched his chin through his mask. "The guys and I went over that a little bit while you slept last night. We didn't want to wake you." He seemed to be choosing his words carefully and I held my breath to keep the expletives down. "But, we decided that we'd do it a little differently than normal." He cleared his throat. "Yue-san, don't you need to go to the market today?" his voice lightened when he changed the subject so quickly.

"Why, yes. I do. I also need to pick up the children."

"Ah, perfect. Sakura, why don't you guard Yue-san while she's out? The others and I will attempt to track down some witnesses or by-passers who might know the enemy."

"And whose brilliant idea was it to have this 'secret meeting' while I was out? Naruto's?" I bit out sarcastically. I had an inkling that the Uchiha brat was behind this one. For some reason he didn't want me to do my job as information seeker. I was the kunoichi so the job would have fallen to me and he knew that. It was how it had always been since I had become Chuunin and Naruto and Sasuke started Jonin ranks weeks prior.

"Of course not! It was Sasuke-teme!" Naruto slammed his hands on the table, causing his fork to fall to the floor. The idiot didn't know what the hell sarcasm was but his ignorance came in handy for the answer I wanted.

"Sasuke-_kun_," I stressed the 'kun' with an ugly sneer on my mouth. The only time I used his old suffix now was when I was 'overly emotional', as Kakashi-sensei would put it. I just called it being pissed off. "Can I talk to you for a moment...if you don't mind, that is?" I added in a way that made it clear that he was going to come whether he minded or not. I stomped out of the house, ignoring Naruto's low whistle, to the backyard and kept walking until I was sure Naruto couldn't eavesdrop. I didn't look back, but I could feel Sasuke's chakra slowly and calmly following.

Once I made it to the center of the field behind the house I stopped, my back still towards the dark-eyed man. I didn't turn until a few moments after he situated himself behind me. He waited patiently for me to begin.

I made sure to take a deep breath to calm my voice. Yelling wasn't an effective way to get a point across to a person like him. "I'm a part of this team, Sasuke. You can't make decisions like this without consulting me." My voice shook with the effort to restrain myself from extending my arm and slapping his pretty little face.

"Sakura, calm down." He spoke without conviction; like I was a child.

"I AM CALM!"

He gave me a flat look at my outburst. "Look. All I did was bring up the idea and Kakashi agreed. He would approve of you staying in Fire Country territory as well." He crossed his arms and stood straighter, trying to physically tell me not to object.

"You guys can't protect me forever! It's starting to get out of hand. Sooner or later something will happen and you won't be there. I can protect myself if that happens." I'd be damned if I trained with Tsunade-shishou for all those years and not be able to use those given skills!

"Don't say such silly things." He looked up at the sky and the wind ruffled his hair against his face. "You don't know what you're talking about, Sakura. Kakashi and I have seen a lot of cruelty in this world…the Dobe as well." He seemed hesitant to include Naruto into the conversation. "We just don't want you to see it." He whispered. "You're the only thing on this team that's pure anymore."

And with that, he had me. I felt my tongue swell and almost immediately had nothing more to contribute. I knew all too well the "cruelty" that he spoke of witnessing; I had read his file one afternoon while Tsunade-shishou was passed out. I would never have known about Itachi's innocence or Madara's defeat if not for the few Paragraphs written in that restricted little manila envelope.

I also knew too well that I had never seen anything close to the carnage that my other teammates had experienced. I constantly was reminded of this fact, so I didn't appreciate _him_ reminding me. But I was not ever going to deny it.

If they wanted to keep me "pure", as he put it, I wouldn't object. I'd keep this one thing for them. Kami knows I didn't want to end up like the others. Sasuke had always been inwardly tragic and I had witnessed a little more light in Naruto's eyes darken every year. Kakashi was just…I didn't even know. He was hard to explain.

If two of the strongest ninja I would ever know were slowly eroding, I knew that I would have no chance of surviving what they had suffered.

So, I walked away. It was the only thing I could think of and I had too much pride to admit I was wrong or apologize, but at the same time I had the awareness to see how blind I had been. In my folly, I had interpreted their desire to see me unharmed with thinking they were holding me back; when in all reality I was holding myself back. I felt like a fool, so I kept on walking until I was once again to the back door of the house.

I turned on an impulse and almost bumped into his chest for I hadn't felt him walking with me.

"I will always accept the feelings of my teammates, Sasuke. Remember that well. But, I will not hold myself back form the opportunities placed in front of me. I can't become ANBU if I sit in the sidelines like I did as a Genin." My voice was gaining momentum with my emotions. I still had a long way to go due to the fact that I was still Chuunin; thanks to all the hours I worked at the hospital I didn't have the time to take the Jonin exams that year. Sasuke and Naruto had, of course, and I was still agitated that they passed so easily whilst I was still so far behind. I was going to have to work harder. "I also have a coinciding goal; to see you, Naruto, and Kakashi-sensei achieve your own goals of going as far as you can. You can't achieve that if you are constantly slowing yourselves down for my benefit." I kept my eyes on his chest for fear he would see my shame and pleasure.

Pleasure because it was the first time Sasuke had ever spoken to me in so many diverse ways, and also because I had sounded so mature when I spoke. I had also made no room for arguments.

But, of course, he found some way to make me bite my tongue. "Naruto and I are no longer searching for power. We are finished with such things." His elocution was so proper it was annoying. "We now follow the similar goal of protecting our family." He finished.

I blinked, shocked, and glanced up to see his face but he walked- fast paced- into the house. It took a few moments before I was able to recuperate myself. It seemed silly, but I never considered a time in life where Sasuke wouldn't be searching for more strength and Naruto wouldn't be fighting to save him from himself. It had been a recurring theme in our lives for so long that it felt wrong for it to be so peaceful now. It was strange to not have Sasuke attempting to kill us and Naruto chasing blindly and single-mindedly after his attacks. It was still awkward for Sasuke to be back at all. He was away for so long that I found myself adapting to his absence, but now I was still adapting to his _presence_.

I sometimes couldn't decide whether he was still insane or whether he had finally found his place; finally discovered himself and became a man. I had pictured him in my mind for so long as the same twelve year old Genin as he was when he left, so it still shocked me at times when I would glance over to him and realize again that his jaw was more strongly constructed. He no longer carried the childish-nedd in his features as he did back then, nor the same build.

He towered over me by nine inches and his arms were the size of my upper thighs. I never felt as small as I did while I was in his presence. He could, if he pleased, make himself more imposing than a mountain. It was no mystery to why I could never convince him of my ability. He probably pictured me as a frail little girl still, considering I was the same size as I was when I was sixteen and we had found him in Orochimaru's hideout. That was the first time Naruto and I had seen him since he left four years prior, but we still hadn't succeeded in bringing him back. He wasn't that kind of man. Sasuke had always been the kind to have returned in his own time. He had to learn where he needed to be all by himself and choose his own path and learn from it.

But, I still wasn't going to take it. He would see, sooner or later, that I wasn't needy anymore. I would hold up to my word and keep on my path to becoming ANBU and I would take any opportunities that came my way to get there. It would prove hard to do that _and_keep myself safe for my teammates' concerns. But, first I needed to finish the mission. Yue-san was waiting for me in the kitchen.

* * *

><p>The small, crooked streets were almost empty as I walked through. It was the complete opposite as the day before when we had arrived to the town. It was also so different form the other day in the fact that I was now not even a rudimentary part of the mission anymore. Instead of helping the others or actually <em>doing something<em> I was stuck in baby-sitting duty! I was fine with guarding Yue-san, but children were a different story. I had never been good with children that I didn't know and my awkwardness with them wasn't going to help Yue-san at all.

"Don't be nervous. They'll love you, Sakura-san. Especially Migi-chan. She's becomes attached to others quickly; a real social butterfly that one is..." Yue-san laughed at my expression again. If I was going to be ANBU someday I needed to work on concealing my emotions better. They were getting too noticeable…. I sighed and followed Yue through the streets until she stopped in front of a large, red building. It was three stories high and the front doors were thick and heavy. She lifted a round, brass figure on the door and banged it a few times. I guessed that it was this town's version of a door-bell, though it was still strange.

We didn't wait more than a few seconds before a frazzled-looking, middle-aged woman tugged back the heavy black door and sighed. "Ah! Yue-san. Thank Kami you're here! I have more children than I can handle today and Maru-kun is especially hyper!" She seemed relieved to have two of the many children yelling and running around the house leave.

The door shut again for a moment and she returned again with a dark-chestnut haired young boy. His chocolate brown eyes smiled when he saw Yue and he clung to her right leg. It was obvious that he got his looks from his mother. His eyes must have been a trait from his father, though. They were much darker than Yue-san's shimmering green orbs. "Where's Migi-chan? I really want her to meet Sakura-san here." Yue asked and pointed to me in introduction to the busy woman.

"Uh." The woman at the door stuttered and coughed awkwardly, glancing around the street behind us. "She was swinging in the backyard. She should be on her way shortly after she puts her shoes on. You know how your daughter is with tying her laces, Yue-san!" They both laughed at the woman's joke and Maru gave a distempered look at the woman's words. He seemed grumpy about something pertaining to the woman, but walked away from Yue and planted his little feet in front of mine with a large smile and a wave of his broken arm. The cast was a dark azure color that matched the sky. I bent down on my knees into the hard dirt to offer a hand-shake and introduce myself to the short eight year old boy but Yue's voice distracted me.

"This, Sakura-san, is Migi-chan. Isn't she just the most adorable little girl you've ever seen? She gets it from her father." Yue bragged and gestured her hand to her right side. Her hand was clenched around the air as if she was holding something. I looked around for Migi but didn't see her behind Yue or at the door.

"Just go along with it. I do." Maru whispered and went to Yue's right side as well, holding the air in the same fashion as his mother.

"Well, don't just stand here!" Yue giggled. "Say hello, Sakura-san."

"Hello." I croaked out and looked at the empty space she was holding hands with. No matter how hard I tried to see Migi, I couldn't. My greeting to the nothing-ness at her side seemed to please her, though, and her pleasure seemed to make Maru-kun happy. I didn't quite understand what was going on and was still half-way convinced that Yue and her son were playing some horrible, choreographed joke on me. But as we stood there awkwardly for a while longer I realized that they weren't joking.

Maru gave me a pair of pleading eyes when I glanced to him for some sort of explanation and he mouthed the silent words, "just pretend," to me.

"Now that everyone's met each other and we're no longer strangers to one another, how about we head back to the house. Sakura-san, your team must be back by now." Yue-san explained and strutted towards the house. I nodded and felt my face pale in a cold sweat. "Migi-chan, wouldn't you like to meet the others?" Yue-san asked the air and laughed with delight at the "response" she got. What were the others going to think?

"Um. Yue-san, are you sure that's really a good idea." I rushed out in front of her to stop her from walking any further. The house was coming into view and wasn't far from where she stood. I could already hear Naruto's loud voice barraging through the open windows that were facing us.

"Why wouldn't it be?" she was startled by my sudden and unexpected movement.

"No reason, really. It's just that Naruto isn't very nice to children. Neither is Sasuke. You're seen how emotionally constipated he can be." I tried to convince her as well as I could, but I knew that she probably just thought I was acting like a crazy person; ironically as that sounded. She side-stepped my position in front of her and shook her head in amusement.

"It'll be fine, Sakura-san. Trust me. Maru-kun's very grown up for his age and Migi-chan is so quiet that they won't even know she's there."

"That's what I'm afraid of." I mumbled.

* * *

><p>As soon as we were through the door, I walked as fast as I could into the back living-room to come face-to-face with Hatake Kakashi and the others.<p>

"Emotionally constipated, huh?" Sasuke questioned me with a disgruntled expression and furrowed brow. Naruto was over in the corner snickering at him. They must have heard me talking to Yue-san. I hadn't been the quietest, I realized. But his feelings were not what was important at the moment.

"Please, guys, this is going to sound strange, but just go along with it." I rushed out the words in such a hurry that they blended together. I guessed the urgency in my eyes was sincere looking enough because they were leaning towards me, alert, after hearing it.

"What D'ya mean, Sakura-chan?" Naruto inquired, but I didn't have enough time to explain before Yue stepped into the room with Maru tailing right behind her.

"There you guys are…." Yue Started and I knew what was going to happen next. I was so intent to see the looks on the other's faces that I didn't pay attention to Yue's introduction of her "daughter".

Confusion, criticism, amusement, more confusion. Naruto's face was a myriad of emotions that were easier to dissect. Kakashi-sensei didn't seem to be very surprised, though he was never surprised by anything. And Sasuke was stone faced. I didn't know for how long he stared unrelentingly at Yue-san, but it was long enough to make her nervously excuse herself to the other room with her son and "_imaginary friend"_.

"What the hell is going on?" Naruto asked, but I ignored him.

"What is your _problem_?" I practically yelled at the moody Uchiha. He might _think_ of himself as Mr. High-and-Mighty but he was far from it. He didn't have the right to look at someone like they're worthless, especially not a client.

"My problem?" he asked as if he didn't know how I could possibly think he had one. "The fact that the reason we came all the way to this town was for nothing." He seethed through his teeth. I had a feeling like there was more to it than that.

"What do you mean nothing? We're here to protect her from Sound criminals!"

"I don't know what psychological problem that woman has got, but it affects us now. If her daughter isn't even real, what makes you think that the enemy is? They're most likely made-up in her head as well. The woman's obviously got some issues." He was doing it again; talking like the conversation was over and he was right no matter what. He probably knew what he was talking about, though, considering that he should be an expert on psychological problems by now. However, it was kind of hypocritical for someone who used to be insane to criticize someone else with seemingly similar problems. "It is in our best interest to return to Konoha and consider this mission a failure to communicate." He turned to Kakashi-sensei when he said the last sentence. I could see Kakashi-sensei deliberating his suggestion.

"You can't agree!" I pleaded the masked man. "It's in our best interest to stay!" I tried to keep my voice down so Yue-san and Maru-kun wouldn't hear us from their position in the kitchen.

"Sasuke's right, Sakura. Her daughter doesn't even exist. It would be foolish to believe that the criminals we are here to detain are tangible as well." The silver headed Jonin was pondering aloud.

"Her son's arm wasn't broken by some _imaginary_ force. Even if you do not agree with my staying here, Tsunade-shishou will! Either way, someone's up to something. I'm going to figure out who before…." I didn't want to finish the sentence. "Kakashi-sensei, I know you feel the same way as I do; like something is off here."

Sasuke stood so fast that the chair he was previously sitting in fell backwards onto the wooden floor from his force. "You can't seriously be listening to this, Kakashi! Staying here just for curiosity's sake is even more foolish!" Sasuke tried to override my previous opinion. "You know the repercussions that staying in Sound much longer could potentially bring." He jerked his head towards me, gesturing to me, as if I wasn't in the conversation. As if I wasn't there at all. Now I knew how Yue's imaginary daughter must have felt.

Kakashi-sensei seemed to consider what Sasuke had meant with his cryptic words and gesture as highly important and Naruto was still as confused as ever- still sitting quietly in his chair.

The masked man rubbed his chin in thought. I tried to keep track of how long he was standing there for by counting the ticking of the grandfather clock in the corner, but I gave up after two thousand. When he finally removed his hand from abusing his chin and glanced between mine and Sasuke's faces, I could feel my heart pounding in my feet.

"I agree with Sakura." He sighed and gave Sasuke a sympathetic look of understanding. "We'll talk about this later, Sasuke, but we need to be here. Tsunade-sama will most definitely take sympathy with Sakura's plight and we will need to make sure the enemy is real before assuming it isn't. We can't leave Yue-san unprotected on a whim."

* * *

><p>For the rest of the day I avoided Sasuke. The next morning was no different. I did not believe it wise for my health to frolic around an irate Uchiha. Besides, as it was, he did not seem to desire my presence any more than a cat would desire a pale of water dumped over its back. I was sure the raven-haired man felt betrayed by our old sensei. Kakashi usually took his side on matters such as this so it was a surprise to both of us when he argued on my behalf. Also, the Uchiha was even more agitated in the fact that they hadn't found any useful information or witnesses while they were in Sound territory (stealing my job and making me play house with Yue). Nevertheless, I had gotten my way for once and I was not going to spend the time I had on the mission worrying about Sasuke's feelings.<p>

The more pressing issue of my day's job needed the forefront of my attention. How was I supposed to help Yue take care of her daughter and son when one of the children was only existent to her mind? I was currently pushing Yue's "daughter", Migi, on the swing in the front yard while she cooked lunch.

To say that it was awkward for passers-by to see me pushing an empty swing was an understatement. It was especially strange because Maru-kun was in the swing next to it watching me; I should have been pushing a _real_ child- I would not have had any sore feelings about _that_- but if Yue saw me pushing Maru she might know something was wrong. I needed to pretend the best I could so that Yue believed that I saw her, too.

"When dad was alive he played, too." Maru-kun stated matter-of-factly after a long silence and pushed off the ground to begin swinging himself. "He was really good at it. He got the entire town to play." The brunette boy boasted proudly.

His little outburst surprised me a little and I missed the empty swing as it came back, causing it to hit my knees. I looked to the kitchen window to make sure Yue hadn't seen my little slip-up. "What do you mean by "_game_"?" I asked him, perturbed, when I was sure Yue had not witnessed my lapse in dexterity.

"He called it the "Migi Game". I can't see her either. Only mom can." He explained calmly, chewing on his thumbnail as if he talked about such things regularly. "Dad told me once that Mom wasn't always like that. But he used to pretend to see Migi, too. Everyone does. It's like a big festivity of hide-and-seek." He sounded so grown-up that I wondered if he was really just an eight year old boy for a moment. I watched him study his thumb, thinking he was going to continue.

After a few moments of quiet I asked the question that had been swimming through my mind since the previous afternoon. "Why does your mom think Migi is real?"

"Dad wouldn't tell me and he would never make her go to the doctor like everyone said he should. He didn't want to make her sad. He said she had always wanted a daughter, but they couldn't have any more kids. So I guess he just went along with it. He always tried to give her whatever she wanted. This was his way of giving her a daughter." He implied around the thumb still lodged between his gnawing teeth.

"When did Migi first appear to your mom?" I was so far into the conversation that I had been neglecting the empty swing for quite some time.

"When I was two. That's when the pictures started."

"Pictures?"

"Yeah. Mom started taking pictures of her with the family at the park and stuff, but I can't see Migi in _them_ either. Only mom can. They're just blank photographs on the mantle above the fire-place. It was back a little while after everyone was talking about dad's big case with that bad guy. The one that had everyone's pants in a twist." He sneered out the words with his thumb now digging in his left ear. "His name was Goro Maturasu, I think. He still visits sometimes and mom makes me go to my fort with Migi and play until she rings the cow-bell."

"Goro Maturasu?" I whispered. I could remember the face that went with the name now; the face that was always present on my mother's television. The man with the frayed beard and the deeply-set, bitterly frightening eyes. The man that Yue's husband had convicted to ten years in prison. The rapist from Sound territory.

I felt as if I couldn't keep myself upright and fell into the presumably unoccupied swing. It had all clicked together so fast that my head was sent spinning.

If what Maru said was true, that meant that this _Goro Maturasu_ was the one who broke Maru's arm and he and his band of thugs were the ones who we were supposed to detain. And if _that_ was true, Yue really _was_ the rape victim ten years ago. It couldn't all be coincidence! I didn't _believe_ in coincidence! The rape ten years prior and the judge's conviction, Maru's birth four years later, then Migi's appearance two years after that, and now Goro "visiting" the house. The time-lime I had created in my head was perfect in its devising. The timing of each event was too perfect to be wrong. I _had_ to tell the others.

* * *

><p><strong>Sorry it took so long but I decided that since this was turning out so long that i'd devide it into two parts. The next half will be finished and updated soon, hopefully. I hope you enjoyed and please review...it keeps me writing!<strong>


	6. A Cease in Disparateness REVISED

I do not own Naruto

I revised this because i noticed a lot of spelling errors that i missed the first time. I hope i got them all. 

* * *

><p>While You Were Out<p>

A Cease in Disparateness

* * *

><p><em>It was like a collaboration of scenes- arbitrary. Like separate takes from a movie reel, only pieced together randomly until the moments did not seem real in any substantial way. Too many running so quickly that they were hard to single out from the next, but somehow it seemed so private. So intimate. Like making love to my own mind.<em>

_Voices, pictures, fading imaginings…..memories. They were all there- flashing before my distilled, sometimes fluttering, eyes._

"_Take off your shoes when you enter the house next time!"_

"_Don't even bother coming to the wedding."_

"_Do you remember when we went on that one vacation last summer….?"_

"_I wonder how Dad is doing today…"_

"_I'd like a small order of miso and a large tea, please."_

_The voices were a swarm of unfiltered melody. But just when I thought they would take me over completely, they ceased utterly until there was nothing but a feeling of unease. A prickling on the back of my neck, letting me know of a presence close to me. It felt so real. It felt just like it did when awake and having the same feeling penetrating my instincts and begging me to take action- to protect myself- at any costs._

_Then, and this was the part most peculiar, all I could see was the inside of a medicine cabinet. The shelves were crammed with things I had never seen but I knew I had been there once before in another dream in the past- but I could not remember it. The florescent light bulbs above my head were high pitched as I stared at the contents of the clustered shelves until I reached towards the glass cup lying on the bottom shelf. I dropped my toothbrush unceremoniously into the container with a loud, jingling clank and leaned away from the sink onto the haunches of my feet to stretch my calves. My ankles popped and I sighed revealingly._

"_What do you want, Sasuke?" My voice was so faint that it was almost not there at all. I said his name as if it was something that rolled off of my tongue regularly. It was so colloquial. I didn't know how the feeling of his presence had appeared out of nowhere behind me, but a tingling feeling on the back of my neck said that he did it often in this dream that I could not recall. If I had been awake I would have laughed. I never said Sasuke's name anymore. To do so only caused conversation or past memories to begin that I did not want to delve into. Only in a dream would I utter such a thing as _that man's_ name, and I was scared that when I woke up I would regret my subconscious allowing such things into myself while I was sleeping- vulnerable to even my own mind. Sasuke would never be in a bathroom with me while he was still under control of Sound's power. Sasuke would never be with me in a bathroom even if he had never abandoned Konoha…._

_I saw my pale arm reach out and close the mirror over the medicine cabinet and my eyes framed themselves upon the reflection of the figure behind me, leaning casually on the opposite wall of the bathroom in a way that was so painfully _Sasuke_ that it _hurt_. He looked the same as he did when we infiltrated Orochimaru's hideout almost a year and a half ago. With his hair still spiked, it hung over the edges of his ears and rustled against the skin of his neck when his head twisted slightly to crank quizzically sideways at my reflection in the mirror I was facing. His hands were in his pockets and his head leaned back upon the wall behind the closed door of the bathroom we occupied._

"_Come and find out." He said in that even voice… that unbelievably Cheshire voice that held a grandiose expression of overbearing kindness. False kindness, I reasoned with myself before I could let his tone deceive me. I knew that _he knew_ he could manipulate me. Because he knew my feelings. Even in my dream, I would not let him have the satisfaction._

_I wondered what he meant by what he said, but my dream-voice answered him without my permission. "Why should I?" My quietness startled me. I felt as if I was inside myself screaming to get away from him. Nothing came out but my mind's impending audio. "What do I get if I do?" I went on, sounding feint, whimsical and out of breath- like there wasn't enough air in the small confines of the walls surrounding us and seemingly closing in with each word thrown between._

"_I'll show you, if you'd like," Came his steely reply and he mulishly shrugged in a typically unhelpful Uchiha-esque fashion. __He spoke in a conniving and aloof, hand-in-glove, effeminate style that was still, above all, deep and masculine to me.__ His eyes were hard crimson rivers ('Did he ever turn off his Sharingan?' I wondered) and the skin under his eyes was turning dark from lack of sleep, but I was still surprised with his grandiose stature. Why was he so tired looking? In my dreams, people were always how I normally viewed them in real life- so Sasuke should have looked like a Greek sex-god, or at least well-rested and effulgent. He seemed taller, and even more grand, than he had a year ago at Orochimaru's hideout. I couldn't decide if I should be afraid of those words or their seeming implications. But, a dream never hurt anyone, did it? The rational part of my brain knew that this was not real anyhow. "Follow your name." he answered in the most supercilious, equivocated voice I had ever heard uttered. It was an order. He was still as unabashedly multifaceted in my mind as ever._

"_My name?" I asked, but let the subject drop when he did not answer immediately. There was no use in arguing pedantic details with him. "What happens when I follow it?"_

"_Must you ask?" he drawled out supinely then continued in his relaxed pronunciation. "You can imagine what happens."_

"_We go out for tea?" I feigned ignorance in the same emotionless voice as his to try and gauge an answer. I still had not turned toward him, choosing instead to speak to the mirror instead of his face._

"_Don't be fatuous, Sakura," his words were warbled. The tomoe of his red eyes spun, making me light-headed, as his image behind me shivered and disappeared into smoke and soon was nothing but an empty space in the mirror's reflection. I didn't know if it was the dream or if it was the effect of him playing some kind of Sharingan trick on me. I felt like he was holding me down with nothing but my own mind, even after he was gone and I was drifting from the bathroom scene slowly but surely to somewhere else._

_But before I could gain any type of real answer to my questions, or submit to any reasoning on the scene splayed out before me, it shifted again. And again. And again. Until I could no longer hold my being in one and my whole body erupted in gnashing portrayals of blistering cold. I felt as if I was being torn between each different scene- like each dream tugging me towards it and fighting for dominance over the others, like I was falling into those eyes that frightened me so- until one finally won the battle._

"_What a strange dream this is," I whispered to myself in the aftermath, and sighed in the appeal to be out of that bathroom once more. The air had been suffocating while so close to him. An overly-powerful genius with a personal vendetta against humanity was not good company to keep, I reasoned with myself because I did not want to admit that the trepidation I was feeling was truthfully, in all actuality, the same nervousness I used to feel when in his presence before he had left Konoha all those years ago. I was peeved that my dream was so emotional. Dreams should not make you on edge- they should lull one into complete oblivion while satiating subconscious desires for fulfillment of one certain want or need. But, and I did not want to admit this either, perhaps Sasuke _was_ that subconscious desire. It would not surprise me; after all of the years I beat him into the back of my mind, he was the focus of almost every dream I ever had, keeping me fretful even in sleep. I could never escape him, and I did not want to. It was ignorant of me and I knew that, if this had been reality, it would not have ended well. In reality, Sasuke would have sliced me into pieces with the same sword he had tried to kill me with at Orochimaru's lair._

_I shook myself out of such arbitrary thoughts; they hurt too much- and found myself, laying in a duffel bag next to the fire I had fallen asleep next to. I felt something akin to a hangover and inebriation, both meshed together into exhaustion. Would this dream ever end? I seemed like an eternity had passed since the beginning. This was why I was grateful that I usually did not have dreams, but when they _did_ seep into my subconscious, while I lay slumbering, they were usually somewhat the same as this one I was currently and unfortunately still residing in. By this I mean that they usually shifted uncontrollably, and once I became comfortable with one it would move me to another more emotionally abrasive one. I had not become used to the drunken feeling of this scene no matter how many times I experienced it. This time it was different, though. I did not know how. But I was getting a keen sense of prodding in the back of my brain. I halfheartedly registered it as my mind trying to wake me up and cast the thought aside to make room for more important information._

_I was curious as to where this scene would lead me. It was usually different each time, depending on my life outside of Slumberland. I guessed that this dream was an interpretation of my life while I was not sleeping. I had fallen asleep next to the campfire on a mission with the other two members of team 7, Naruto and Sai, while I was awake. I could remember that, at least. Trying to remember anything else made my head heavier. I was also impressed with how well my mind made a replication of the campgrounds in my dream. It seemed eerily real- like I was really there and awake after all. I could hear a large stertor emerging from Naruto's nasal cavity with every inward breath and Sai slept just as silently as in reality. The fire crepitated every so often and embers floated towards the stars. But, while it was a perfect recreation of reality, it was also basely disparate at the same time. The dream and reality were set in the same place but they were so completely unlike one another that they could not possibly be compared. This was because I knew that this had to be a dream, no matter how _real_ it felt. It _had_ to be a dream because reality did not work this way. Reality was more straightforward and eventful. In reality, I had choices. It felt now as if I was incapable of moving my own body- like I was waiting for an order._

_My body lifted, halfway of its own accord it seemed, and I struggled with the strop of my duffel to keep upright. It was so hard to move those arms. My vision was vague and cloudy and I could hear the blood from my veins rush past my ears slowly and feel the beating of my heart in my stomach. An uncontrollable rhythm that drove me wherever it was I was going. My nebulous eyes darted around until they focused on my hands in my lap as I set, cross-legged, upon my now wrinkled duffel covers. I tried to study my fingers, but my eyes could not stop un-focusing and becoming blurry- as if there was an obstruction in my view._

"_Sakura."_

_It took me a few dreary moments before I realized that someone had called for me. My head slowly turned to my left to find the source of the call, but I was only met with a solid wall of trees and ground foliage of the forest. The greenery seemed too ancient, anachronistic, that they did not belong or fit in with the camp-site. The animals were no longer scuffling about and there was only utter silence other than Naruto's snoring and the cackling of the fire on my right side._

"_Sakura." It trailed off again, slightly louder but still liltingly soft, like a figurative melody straddling the wind._

_What was it that I was supposed to be doing, I wondered? My brain was foggy and hard to sift through. Moving on from one thought to another felt like lifting one boulder at a time to find a single object beneath them. Utterly useless._

"_What do you want?" I called out, giving up on trying to remember my place, and a loud squawk of an old crow startled me into submissive quiet once again. It wasn't the natural noise of a crow at night, basking in its dark rest from daytime. It was frightening. It was _frightened_._

"_Come and find out." The voice drawled. I knew I should be afraid, but I could not produce the energy in myself to attain that fear anymore. There was no room left in myself to put it. My head was too bombarded in heaviness, and giving in to the feeling and the desires of the dream were easier than fighting what it wanted of me._

_I cranked my body forward until I was kneeling awkwardly and lifted myself to my feet, steadying myself against a nearby tree. The moss tickled my fingers and water seeped out of it and dribbled down to the base of the trunk from the pressure of my hand leaning upon the spongy, lichen fungus._

_My legs were wobbly and needle-pricked as if coming out of being asleep themselves._

_The voice reverberated against the growing plant-life in the darkness, repeating senseless things and leading me deeper and deeper away from the others. The light of the fire dissipated with each further step through the frondescence and purplish-red leaves. The forest was so plush and un-uprooted that I didn't think anyone had inhabited it other than me and the source of the voice._

_I didn't know how far I made it before I stopped, but I felt breathless and upheaved. My brow was beginning to have the beginning symptoms of sheened sweat from my effort to stay upright and not fall back to sleep. If my legs were anvils, my head was a smoky bar. I pushed my way through the last of the willowwacks and approached the largest tree I had seen before. Its branches were roads in the sky._

_I could see Sasuke leaning against the base of the tree twenty feet from me, looking like all of my favorite things, in the same manner as he had been standing in the bathroom and my heart dropped to my knees, making it hard to bend them to walk forward._

_And, if possible, he was more imposing than even the large tree behind him._

_His arm was raised slightly- just enough for me to notice his hand outstretched towards me. I stumbled through the shadows of the clouds over the moon, floating across the grass, until I was close enough to accept his proposed hand. But as soon as I was only centimeters from taking his fingers in mine he retracted himself and sighed out a long breath from his nose. "Would you like to join me?" his voice was vague as if his mind were somewhere else entirely._

_I didn't know how to reply so I just leaned against the bark of the mammoth tree to his right, crossing my arms around myself defensively, as if expecting a backlash form him at any given second. There was only silence for the longest time as we watched the clouds drift over the moon. The air was soft and cooling and my head became a little less fuzzy while standing so close to the Uchiha. He was so still that I could have easily forgotten he was there until he spoke again._

"_Are you afraid of me?" he asked, head turning to regard my face, making sure I was going to answer. His eyes were the same red as in the mirror and it made me involuntarily shiver. "You were never quiet…." He let the sentence drift, as if too lazy to continue._

_I knew what he had meant, though. He had not wanted to say it, preferring me to make the correct assumption on my own. He had meant to say, 'You were never quiet back then, on Team 7."_

"_No," I lied, answering his question a little too quickly and my voice held a slightly vague rasp. I cleared my throat and continued in a stronger tone. "No, I'm not afraid of you," I shook my head to emphasize. "I'm just still embarrassed, I have to admit. The last time we actually spoke was not in my favor," I winced, remembering my confession of love that was ultimately shot down all those years ago, and the utterly crude way of waking up on the cold, concrete bench the next morning…alone. "I made a fool of myself- don't deny it to try and make me feel better either!" I laughed freely at the thought of him doing such a thing. Sasuke Uchiha would never spare useless words on making a girl feel less of a jack-ass. It just wasn't who he was, and I was a little thankful for that. Sasuke was never anything but Sasuke, no matter how long he had been away or how many of Konoha's retrieval attempts were evaded by him. I had given up hope that we could make him return with us on that day in Orochimaru's hideout. Sasuke could not be made to return until he was _ready_ to return…..on his own._

_The world outside of Konoha- outside of team 7- held what he so desperately needed and, now that I was older, I could see that clearly. The only thing I could do for him was hope that his old home village held enough weight in his memory or enough appeal for him to return after his one true desire was fulfilled. I knew how irresistible desires were. When I was twelve, I would have given anything- done anything- to make this man mine. I could not blame him for being so selfish, for I had been selfish once as well._

_He smirked in amusement as well after my laughter had died down. "Hn."_

_I was surprised with how free my tongue was and I was happy that the _real_ Sasuke wasn't the one I was speaking to. The _real_ Sasuke would walk away without a sparing glance in my direction telling me that I spend too much time talking. But I was not that same little girl. I was old enough to carry on a conversation and he old enough to listen without any of it implicating back to our old childhood ways of conversation. He did not make any snide comments at me (which only proved further that I was dreaming) and I rationalized that the sweet talks I had longed to have with him when I was little were overrated and only happened in cheesy romance novels when it was necessary to the devising of the plot._

"_Besides," I went on. "It's not like this is real anyway." I smiled up at him gently and rubbed the sleep from my eyes. "I'll wake up in the morning and be none-the-wiser."_

_He gave me a strange, strangled looked but it almost immediately morphed back into the stoic solid that had become so evolvingly second-nature to him. "Things are different now…. We're not the same as we were before. Time changes things, events- but not people." He gave me a meaningful look as he said this. My head was still heavy and I yawned sleepily._

"_Sure. Sure." I waved my hand at him and his lips strained to not tug upward at my placated gesture. His red eyes were still staring into the moon when I glanced back up to study his face. "I _am_ confused though…." I trailed off, not sure if I wanted to ruin the steady, pleasant stride we had started the mood in._

_He tilted his head infinitesimally in a way to say, 'Continue, please.' But I played with my fingers, rubbing my bare feet into the dirt childishly to stall for time. 'I take it back. I don't want to talk about it,' I wanted to say then he spared me a knowing look of seemingly-cold understanding. But he kept giving me that blank stare until I sighed in defeat. I didn't know how to word what I wanted to ask so I just blurted out, "Why did you call me out here, Sasuke? It certainly wasn't to stare at the sky."_

_His eyebrows knit together for less than a second, then, if possible, his sarcastic expression became even more so. I hated that look and I could tell he didn't intend to answer me. Whether or not this was because he did not know the answer or he just didn't want to talk anymore, I did not know._

"_You make faces that are unacceptable in society." I almost spat, glared at him, frustrated, and he made an effort to rearrange his features languidly back into a softer shade…just to placate me, perhaps._

"_I felt sorry for you," he moved his gaze from the sky to the trees ahead, surrounding us like a mote. "You looked like you were having a bad dream. So I decided you needed a walk to clear your mind and take in your limited horizons." He finished answering without looking at me, which only grated me further. He was being evasive again._

"_Don't lie to me so easily. It disheartening," My words made the surrounding silence turn a shade quieter._

_But he still did not give me the truth. He didn't even answer. He stuck to his story._

_I shouldn't have let this hurt as much as it did because I knew the Uchiha well, though he would never let himself think that I did. Somehow I think he knew it though….and I knew that whenever he was faced with something particularly hard to take in or answer, he would pretend as if he did not hear the question or as if nothing had happened at all. At times I was one hundred percent sure it would drive me mad. I blamed his off-kilter, odd family and I landed him with a playful pout that would have broken any lesser of a man. The only indication that I got that he had seen it was his awkward shifting from one leg to the other._

'_He doesn't care if it's disheartening for you or not. He would kill you if he got it in his mind to.' Said the voice in my head; the one that hated me. And the realization of the truth in the words brought a shudder to release through my middle. I had been trying to suppress that shudder since I saw him in that mirror; it seemed so long ago that that had happened._

_He noticed my scrunched expression and gave out a belated, "Ah," after a moment of studying me when he probably found out what I was thinking. I eyed the long sword on his back and had to force myself not to glance at it every few seconds in the silence that represented itself forward again._

_I tried to reason with myself that the Uchiha would not waste his time killing someone like me. I would put up no fight; I didn't have the heart to. It would be boring for someone as tactful as him anyway….not just boring- _'kunai to the jugular'_ boring. And I didn't think he would insult me by killing me in the middle of something like this. We weren't very close but… He, above everyone else, must have known how dishonorable that would be and the least he could do was give me the appreciation of killing me in a battle of some kind. I would rather him run me through with chidori in a fair fight than with the business end of a kunai under a calming breeze._

"_So, you aren't going to kill me?" I asked so quietly that I didn't think he would hear me._

"_It that why you thought I called you out here?" he chopped out a hard, caustically humorless laugh. "If I had wanted to kill you, I would do it without all of the theatrics," he gestured to everything around us with a sweep of his arm. "I would have just visited the camp and killed you along with the Dobe, and purged that fake-smile ANBU guy while you slept. It would be quiet. It would be humane." He seemed to think hard about something for a second, probably imagining it. He sounded too calm with the idea of ending the lives of two of his past teammates. He was always calm, though, and I attributed this again to his habit of hiding his emotions from even himself. The deadliest people were the ones who knew how to control themselves. I knew that better than most._

_So I chose not to believe his words. He must have been trying to distance himself from the situation around him, just like Kakashi-sensei did by reading Icha Icha. It kept people away just like wanted. I was sure he would never do such a thing as what he said._

_I told myself that Sasuke was wild, but he wasn't crazy._

"_Purge, huh?" a laughed in the same fashion as he had moments before. "What a convenient way to describe indiscriminate slaughter." I felt more than saw him shift again when he did not like what I had to say. I was sure he felt awkward and did not expect me to be so brash with him. He probably expected me to be fawning and doting like my old self. "You're terrible." I had wanted to use a better adjective, but that was all my heavy, frozen mind could come up with._

"_Don't judge me, Sakura. You know me not at all…. If that is that how you actually think."_

"_Of course it's what I think. How could it not be after what you said?" I whispered. I wanted to slap the entire length of my life across his face. If only I could have. I didn't want to give him any reason to decide me useless to the moment and "purge" me. He would say something particularly hurtful, and then when I called him out on it he would act as if I were obtuse to what he had meant. "You have no compassion at all for anything other than yourself and your own revenge." The things he carried were far more superior than Naruto or myself. Even I could not deny that. What was friendship compared to revenge? His desire to rid the world of the cause of such pain he endured would always outshine us._

"_Of course I do." He admitted. "If I killed you, this conversation would end abruptly. And that would make for a rather off-putting, one-sided conversation on my part." his voice cradled the same cold distance as before but his words were an attempt at old, bygone familiarity._

_I almost choked on my spit when I registered his words and he leaned back casually, pocketing his hands like he always did when he was particularly off his usual attitude of '_I don't give a damn'. _He gave me a few seconds, though, to regain myself and a chance to again find the grounding that had come spiraling from underneath my surprised feet._

"_Don't say things like that. I didn't like being teased back then and I don't like it now….especially not from you." I tried to sound angry but ended up lax in comparison to his always strong sentences. "Anybody but you."_

"_Because you are still weak." It was a comment, but he tried to make it sound like a question at the end of the sentence, and his upper inflection sounded strange there._

"_Only around you."_

_He waited a moment before giving me a, "Hn." It wasn't an agreement with what I had said. It was somehow softer, like he had been told something a thousand times in his life and was now only noticing it was true._

_Silence again. Uncomfortable silence, like something was being left unsaid until he uttered what had been missing this entire time._

"_I had a run-in with my emotions today…..I'm embarking on a new cycle of my life." He left it at that and it took me longer than it should have to realize that he was answering my question of why he hadn't tried to kill me. I could tell he did not want to speak any further of it, so I took it with a grain of salt- happy that he had even said that at least. All I could do was stare at him jovially with a wide grin._

"_Don't look at me like that."_

"_Okay," But all I did was stare at him again with the same dumb grin stretching my face. I was not an expert of aesthetics, by far, but I did not need to be to observe the grown beauty of his features- so different from what I remembered of his childhood self; a selective re-creation of reality according to my metaphysical value judgments. His boy-ish cheeks had receded until strongly defined, just like the rest of him._

"_I still blame you for everything. Don't ever forget that, Sasuke." I didn't know how long I had been standing there staring, but I finally decided that enough was enough and dancing around the issue of what really needed to be talked about was getting us nowhere. I didn't want to wake up in the morning without telling him that, at least. It seemed like it would be a waste if I let this go on uneventfully. "Naruto has never blamed you, as you probably knew he wouldn't. He's too strong for that," I smiled sadly thinking about the blond boy back at the camp, sleeping away obliviously. "You two are capable of impossible cruelty towards each other, if only because you bond is so strong- no matter how hard you try to sever it. But I wasn't that close with you so I wasn't strong enough to forgive you so easily. I can understand how you feel about your revenge. Not fully- I haven't lived what you have, by far- but I know it is how you are and I would be a fool not to accept that…." I hesitated, not knowing where I was going with this. "But I still blame you for choosing Orochimaru's power over your own- for leaving me behind with nothing but a 'thank you'."_

"_You have an irritating tendency of preserving the past." He snorted rudely but then became serious again: "Culpability is subjective to whoever's mind it exists in," Sasuke admonished elusively as if there was a whole secret truth to the world that I was not aware of. "You blame me because I didn't return your feelings. Naruto doesn't because he has faith that I will return home someday. He doesn't rely on his _feelings_ or me voicing it to tell him that I will. He just believes." I felt like he was lecturing me, patronizing me like he used to. "You're not very much different form me, Sakura. You wanted strength because you felt weak compared to Naruto and I. The only thing that set us apart was that I needed more of it than you did. All you needed was a stronger teacher. I need to just get stronger." His jaw tightened and his eyes became an even darker shade of crimson than before. "You, in a way, were trying to become more like me. Because you wanted to impress me and show me that you weren't as weak and annoying as I had previously believed." He scoffed and shook his head, as if the idea of me doing or thinking such a thing was pathetic or wrong. As if looking up to him was the most unattractive thing possible and something that I should have been punished for._

"_I hate that to be like you as a ninja, I have to be like you as a human being." I ground through clenched teeth, admitting silently that what he said was right._

"_You couldn't be further from the truth." He lifted himself from the tree and paced forward a few short steps to stretch his legs then turned his head to regard me over his shoulder. "Naruto would never have let you become like me anyhow. He loves you too much." I could have sworn I spotted a cheeky smile grace his lips before he looked forward again and all I could see was his back, five feet away. There was a feeling that I got after he said that and I didn't know how to describe it other than to say that it was warm._

"_It's curious, isn't it?" I asked. "Naruto, I mean…. How someone could have so much love." I answered when he looked like he didn't understand what I was talking about. "At times I'm afraid that it'll run out one day…"_

"_He'll be fine." Sasuke offered. "He always is."_

"_But will _you_ be fine?" I ventured, hoping he didn't become angry with my forward words. I was afraid that even him raising his voice would startle me out of my slumber and this dream would end forever._

"_Aa."_

_I could tell he was annoyed by my soft heart. He looked at me strangely for a second and opened his mouth to say something, but then seemed to think twice about it. His hands were out of his pockets and he seemed like he didn't know what to do with them._

"_You should go back to your team," he ordered, trying to sound cold again, but he was too warmed. "The sun will begin to rise in a few hours and I have to return to Orochimaru. He doesn't like it when I am away; he likes to think of me as a mindless robot…. He's afraid I'll gain a mind of my own."_

_I didn't know what to say, so all I did was nod. "I'll see you again soon, Sasuke." I smiled vaguely, but he kindly didn't return it, instead preferring to fidget with his sword and stare at the ground. "I'll make another dream date." I promised. "We can do anything." I tried to convince him. "What do you think should happen?" I asked, trying to prolong the moment._

"_We go out for tea?" he asked mockingly and I blushed. They were my words so it didn't appropriate for him to take them. "I still have got a lot of angsty teenager-isms in my hormonal hard-drive. Nothing that a few days of vigorous fore-play can't fix, though," he shrugged, completely at ease as if he didn't just insinuate the possibility that we could do _that_. But I could see the stiff, almost too stiff, way his shoulders and forearms moved with the rest of him._

"_Don't tease me!" I suppressed the urge to stamp my foot. I didn't want to seem like a child. "I'm being serious."_

"_So am I," he looked away from my face to the darkest part of the woods, where I imagined was the direction he had come from, and he huffed impatiently. He seemed to remember after a moment that I was there and he underhandedly tossed something towards me._

_It startled me enough that I almost didn't catch it and I had to franticly flail my arms forward like an uncoordinated schmuck to catch it. It was encased between my palms and I was almost too hesitant to look at what it was._

"_You don't have to if you don't want to, Sakura," he assured me, gesturing with a nod of his head towards whatever was in my hands. Then he began to walk away towards the direction he was staring at a moment ago with his hand raised in a lazy farewell as I watched his retreating back. I scrambled with what he had tossed me until I held it between my thumb and fore-finger in the light of the moon to read the thin, white piece of plastic._

"Hitoban Hotel, July 12," _was written in perfect, thick calligraphy. _"Room 7"_, the key hanging on the metal loop said. It clanked against the plastic as my hand tightened around them, forcing them together, and opened my mouth to yell to the Uchiha's back that he was not as smooth as he thought he was; only he was already gone._

_He had been swallowed up by the grass._

_I stood there like an idiot for a few moments before deciding that he was not coming back and turning on my heel to confront the woods again._

_My stroll was more of a rampage through the thicket of shrubbery than anything else. The boscage surrounding me seemed to sober me somewhat. Now that I was out of the watchful eye of the Uchiha, I didn't feel as heavy or mindly-downtrodden, but the exhaustion still stayed intact, aggravatingly so. It wasn't until I was walking for ten minutes that I finally realized just how far I had traveled through the copse and I was worried I had been walking in circles and was about to turn around when I spotted a faint flicker of the dying fire through a certain thicket of leaves. I almost sprinted through the rest of the way until I made it once again to the campsite._

_It was almost an unnatural feeling to be there in the absolute quiet instead of back at the clearing. I felt awkward until I realized that I had been standing there with one foot still in the woods, about to turn back around and head back to the tree, breathing loudly and tiredly._

_The key in my clenched fist jingled as my hand trembled with how hard I was clasping my fingers shut over it. "You're a bastard," I whispered to myself, wishing I could say it to his face. I didn't want to admit to myself that I entertained the thought of unlocking the door to room seven on July 12, and finding him there, waiting. I didn't want to admit that I imagined something more profound than having tea together. And I certainly did not want to admit that Sasuke never made jokes; the word 'fore-play' coming out of his mouth was nothing but complete and utter seriousness. But most of all, I did not want to let myself get so worked up because of it. In the morning, he would be just as gone as he had been before I had fallen asleep and the excitement of thinking of meeting him again would be shattered. He would be unattainable, no matter how much I wished it was true. I wanted to blame his words, just him in general, but I couldn't- I love him too much. I wouldn't have worried so much about him if I didn't, I realized._

_I lay myself in my duffel again- throwing the blanket over myself a little too angrily- that was now cold from neglect and the dwindling warmth of the smaller fire. I planned to do nothing but let sleep consume me, but I could not forget his voice no matter how hard I closed my eyes._

I hadn't noticed I had come out of the dream until I smelled fish roasting by the fire behind me and the sound of eggs frying. Sai must have been cooking them, for I did not detect any smells of burning meat. I tried not to move or alert them that I was awake. I wanted a little more time to myself.

I could still hear him in my mind, like he was still dancing behind my closed eyelids.

"_I'm embarking on a new cycle of my life."_

"_You could not be further from the truth."_

I scoffed quietly so as not to alert the others to my rousing.

"_He'll be fine. He always is."_

The key in my hand jingled almost loudly when I shifted my arm under my pillow and I clenched it tighter to keep it from falling out of my grasp. I was afraid it would finally disappear. I felt like I had the morning after Kakashi had used the Sharingan on me in my Genin days to conjure up the image of Sasuke, bleeding and in pain, during the bell test.

I lay there, trying to unravel the anomaly that was Uchiha Sasuke. But trying to find all-encompassing definitions is not only difficult, but also introduces boundaries that limit our imagination.

Sasuke lived in a world of sharper and swifter impressions than the world I lived in. He had rushed through his childhood- throwing it away ungratefully- and, sooner or later, it would catch up to him. I was sure he knew that, too. Then the means of undoing the damage of haste would bring him back to Konoha. I decided that I would forgive him, like Naruto. I was strong enough for that.

I would learn to accept difference as natural rather than as a threat to my whole style of life; break down the barriers by eliminating the distance between Haruno Sakura and Uchiha Sasuke- and maybe even questioning the nature of forgiveness itself. I could tell him that I still did not forgive him until I was blue in the face, but that did not change the fact that I someday it was inevitable that I would. I could not create a speck of disparateness or coarseness for him in my heart. Blaming someone instead of your own self is very nice, but it lacks form. The only way to grow stronger was to move freely into areas of experience and understanding which were formerly unknown. The secret flame that burns in a person's existence: Sasuke's was a path of vengeance and mine was learning to forgive him for that. I couldn't doll out false placation, perfect in its imperfection, for the rest of my life- just like I could not hold a grudge. Not if I someday wished for him to forget his path of hatred and come back to Konoha, to Team 7…to me. I pressed the key to my chest until it hurt and closed my eyes as tight as I could.

I saw Sasuke's face again, and felt for the first time how the paths he traveled on must have bruised his feet.


	7. Natural Born Killers Part II

I do not own Naruto.

It's a month early but...Dedicated to TheLavendarHippie for all of her wonderful reviews and support. Thank you, and enjoy!

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><p>While You Were Out<p>

Natural Born Killers: Part II- Second Meeting

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><p><em>8 He sits in the lurking places of the villages;<br>__ in the secret places he murders the innocent;__  
>his eyes are secretly fixed on the helpless.<em>

_9 He lies in wait secretly as a lion in his den;  
>He lies in wait to catch the poor;<br>He catches the poor when he draws him into his net._

_10 So he crouches, he lies low, that the helpless may fall by his strength._

Psalms 10: 8-10

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><p>Psychopathy: A mental disorder in which an individual manifests <span>amoral and antisocial behavior<span>, lack of ability to love or establish meaningful personal relationships, extreme egocentricity, failure to learn from experience, etc.

Both the _financial elite and their underlings_, who maintain this system, appear to exhibit behavior that is consistent with symptoms associated with a medical disorder known as psychopathy. Psychopaths, also called sociopaths, are categorized as those who exhibit superficial charm and intelligence, and are absent of delusions or nervousness. Their traits include:

Unreliability,  
>Frequent lying,<br>Deceitful and manipulative behavior (either goal-oriented or for the delight of the act itself),  
>Lack of remorse or shame,<p>

Antisocial behavior,

Poor judgment and failure to learn by experience,

Incapacity for love,

Poverty of general emotions,

Loss of insight,

Unresponsiveness in personal relations,

A frequent need for excitement,

An inflated self-worth,

An ability to rationalize their behavior,

A need for complete power,

A need to dominate others.

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><p>To say that the ride to Sound the second time was better was an understatement. I fully enjoyed the air-conditioned and fluffy-seated bus that rode at a steady forty-five mph the entire way. It was far better than riding with Mr. Bloodbath and his fanatical <em>need<em> to degrade and humiliate others.

Tsunade had been all too generous with her goodbyes and had requested that I let her pay for my ticket, seeing as how I would have never went through what I had went through if she had let me have the day off that I had requested. But instead she had made me work and Dr. Kura had insisted I bring his patient to Burodu Village. I sighed at the memory, glad I would never have to return to the past again. Even though it had only been a two weeks ago since the first time the irate Uchiha and I had met, it seemed so far away.

But now I was on my way to him again, willingly this time to my own surprise, and I couldn't help but wonder why I was intentionally putting myself into the same position as before. I wasn't daft and I knew what would happen when I met him again. Sasuke was not the kind of guy to stop what he enjoyed doing just because it made me uneasy- and I felt guilty that I was planning on meeting him once more without any intentions of stopping him. Was I originally crazy or was I more like him that I had thought, I had to ask myself?

Even with all of my degrees that still hung on the old wall in my apartment back home, I could not answer this question. But, I did not mind this as much as I should have.

I should have been furious that he had the audacity to call me to 'work for him' and should have laughed and ignored the request. If I was as smart as I boasted, I would have stayed working for Tsunade in her safe, well-lit office where dead bodies were _not_ precariously strewn across the floor upon entering. But, as it was, I didn't even think of that option until half-way to Sound.

But, now, as the bus was coming closer and closer to the village and I could see the gates already, I had the startling thought of, "What the fuck do you think you are doing?"

Maybe it was the coffee I had just chugged in record time; my heart was pounding so hard that my bag that lay on my lap was moving in time with it. I felt like I would on the first day of school, naked. I had never been to Sound before and I was frightened about the unfamiliar surroundings. The lack of color on the walls of the first buildings were the complete opposite of Konoha's red ones and I shivered when I realized, after wondering for so long, that the reason I was giving up my entire life and home to see him again was because a) I was crazy, b) I loved him, c) I was nutty-cuckoo crazy, or d) I was craving the excitement. I wasn't in the mood to psychoanalyze myself, so I stared out of the windows and breathed slowly to regain my previous groundings as the bus pulled to a stop in front of the station.

But the colors of the village were never-changing. The rain seemed to have washed them out until everything was dark greys and russet tans. The bus station took on an even more depressing quality in the shadow of the sky than the gates had, and I found myself flustered and jumpy. My hands were shaking with such ferocity that I dropped my bag from the overhead compartment onto the top of my head before picking it up with a few muttered expletives and charged off of the large vehicle and through the tall glass doors of the building with new, enlightened fervor.

I didn't know what to do with myself once I entered- I felt out-of-place with my strange hair and vibrant clothes. I was obviously not a local civilian and others noticed almost immediately that I did not belong; I was naturally adventive. I had never gotten the "stink face" from anyone before in my life, but now I was sure what it felt like to have it one hundred times in a row.

"You look lost," said a dull voice from my left as I looked around frantically to find out which port to access from. Sasuke hadn't even told Tsunade where I should meet him at (just as inconvenient as ever), so I was on my own. This didn't seem promising. If Sasuke didn't want to be found, he would not be found.

"Yeah, I am," I replied, giving the tall brunette boy a sparing glance then began walking forward towards a random gate-lane, trying to give him an idea that I did not want to talk to any random strangers. But, he was clearly as daft as he looked because he kept following me and offering conversation.

"You want some help?" he asked. "Most of the time, when tourists come here, whoever their looking for is on the east end of the station. It's where the docks are to meet," he stated like he spent a lot of time in said station.

"I don't know if I should…" I began, growing more and more anxious when the gate-lane seemed to lead to nothing but a loading-dock for a bus to Kiri.

"Why shouldn't you?" he questioned with a strange look, like I was weird or something. And I guessed I _was_ sounding a little strange to brush him off when he was kind enough to go out of his way to help. I didn't know what to do, so I just nodded and followed the boy, keeping a few steps of distance between us as I walked behind his tall frame.

"Excuse me," a hand grabbed my right shoulder, turning me around so fast I thought I would fall due to the weight of my bag. "Are you Haruno Sakura?" the large man asked and gave an indifferent look to the boy I had been following. I nodded in affirmation and he took my bags off of my shoulders.

"Hey! What do you-"

"I was told to come and get you by your…. _friend_." Was all he stated. "You're lucky I saw your hair or I wouldn't have found you." But before I could reply, he was dragging me to the other direction of the station- opposite from where the boy had said the meeting docks were.

"Hey!" said boy came running after us and the large man holding my arm roughly did nothing but simply turn towards the boy, pull aside a bit of his suit to reveal a gun held snugly in its holster, then continue dragging my confused body through Gate F.

"Who the _fuck_are you?" I yelled, causing multiple people to stare.

"Sasuke asked me to come and pick you up. He was busy," his voice was monotone and his head was slightly calvous, even though he could not be more than thirty years old. "Never agree to anyone's help when it's offered, unless you know the person," Was all of the explanation he gave.

"He was helping me to the meeting docks on the east wing," I tried to defend the poor boy.

"There is nothing on the east wing but dark corners and basements," He said, giving me a meaningful look and pushing me gently into the back seat of a darkly-tinted car, then walking to the trunk and pushing my bags in. I heard the trunk slam shut and the car was in motion, leaving the large man behind on the curb with his suit and gun.

* * *

><p>I don't know how long it was before I was thrown, non-too-ceremoniously, into a dark, dusty room with overstuffed chairs and a fire crackling in the dibbet of the opposite wall. It seemed that, in the past few weeks, time didn't seem to matter in any substantial way. Hours could skip and it would feel like minutes. The flames were the only light-force to see by and I tried to feel my way along the wall behind me for a light-switch to see better with. But my hand paused when I heard him.<p>

"Sakura," the familiar voice spoke from a large chair in the shadows against the wall beside the fireplace dibbet. "I trust your ride here was enjoyable," I could hear the smirk on his face. "I'm glad Brahm found you successfully," he spoke, I guessed, about the man left at the curb. "There are a lot of things that could happen to someone like you here in Sound…if you're alone," He finished, letting his smirk drop off his face almost abruptly.

"Why did you do all of this? Did you really miss me that much?" I asked, gesturing all around me and trying not to sound as ill-at-ease as I felt. I walked slowly toward him, testing the waters, before he gestured to the chair in front of him facing his own. I took it, mumbling something about over-theatrical meetings, but never looked away from him. After all, no matter our past together, I knew I should not trust the man. He noticed my guarded movements and laughed, if you could call it that- it was more of a cackle, to himself behind his fist before covering it childishly with a pseudo-cough.

"Don't get cocky, I'm not one for child's play," He flicked my nose as I rested into the seat, leaning forward on his knees with his elbows. "I'm brewing an idea and I want your professional opinion…" he looked deep into my face then sat back in the dusty chair and grinned, clenching his teeth together so hard that I could hear them grinding, like gears in an old clock-tower.

"What's your idea?" I almost growled, already wary of his motives of calling for my recurring appearance.

"Oh, nothing big," he held his hand next to the fire place so close that I wasn't sure if he was trying to warm his fingers or catch them on fire, just for the fun of watching them burn. He seemed to follow my eyes and retracted his hand to have my full attention on his words instead. "I want to kill somebody," he said slowly, testing the waters to see my reaction.

"How does that not surprise me?" I threw up my hands and slapped them back onto my thighs in aggravation, trying not to become too annoyed too swiftly and failing spectacularly.

"Don't you wanna' know who it is?" he inquired melodically, trying to grasp me into playing along for his own hollow pleasure. "You might be intrigued…." He almost begged my interest.

"Start from the beginning, Sasuke," I barked. If he wanted me to give him my professional opinion, I would. And I would be as harsh and truthful as possible the whole way through.

"The beginning?" he asked, quirking his head to the side and scratching the back of his left ear in a way that was nothing less than utterly feline. "Hmmm…." He examined his nails and clicked his tongue, a glint shining in his eye. "Well, when I saw you at the mental hospital with Dr. Kura I thought you looked like a bimbo- what with that little doctor's attire-" he smiled at the memory and I blushed, pressing my lips together and turning away to look at the fire instead. "But, seeing your expression after killing those guards on the bus, I decided that you were a _dumb_ bimbo-"

"Don't be snarky with me, you imbecile-"

"I thought we already went over this, Sakura," he chided. "I'm quite sure I'm smarter than even _you_are," He was so egocentric, and I loved it. But, I wouldn't let him know that so I just settled for a secret smile. But he still held his hands up in an elusive gesture. "Only kidding," he shook his head and sighed. "I thought you looked nice in your little…." He coughed again but this time to hide a knowing smirk. "Nurse's outfit."

"Can we just talk about what we're _supposed_ to be talking about, please...like _adults_?" I pleaded, clicking my pen into action and adjusting the clipboard on my lap.

"Well, when I made it to Sound I realized that I may have had a lapse in judgment when I let you free…." He put his hand to his chin and thought for a few hard minutes as an unseen clock somewhere in the darkness of the room clicked raucously with its ticking and tocking. "At least the cops are off our trail, though," he changed the subject into whatever new train of thought he had started. "And we can get back to the fun without anyone knowing to be looking for _us_…especially since they don't know where I went and they think you're working for that Midarami guy," He smiled at me, not saying it in words, but thanking me for my cooperating silence in his get-away.

"I don't see how this has anything to do with your new _plan_…." I egged him on.

"Patience is a virtue, Sakura-_chan_," he started off mockingly. "But I suppose I'll cut to the chase and skip all the pleasantries, yes?"

"Like you've _ever_been pleasant before…," I mumbled under my breath and he waved a finger to silence me gently with a light "tsk tsk".

"While you were being interrogated in Konoha, I grew bored without your face around to keep me amused," he smirked and I threw him a glare. "So, I decided to go to a nice restaurant with the money left over from that guy at the hotel we killed-"

"_You_killed! You, you, Y. O. U!" I snarled, pointing an accusing finger in his face and gripping the armrest with as much force as I could. "Stop slinging me into your own problems!"

He stared until I found my bearings and sat back again. "Anyway, as I was saying before I was _rudely_ interrupted…." He sighed, folding his hands behind his head and leaning back in the chair until its legs were on their extreme edge. His legs spread in comfort and I was amazed he didn't fall backward. "While I was eating my steak, I was growing increasingly irritated. There was a man at the table next to me, boisterously complaining about the meat being too overcooked. He had some blond broad sipping wine loudly next to him, too. So, I thought to myself, 'What would Haruno Sakura do in a situation like this?...'" he looked up to the ceiling and sighed, speaking the next words straightforwardly with the same smooth tenor of voice that I had grown so accustomed to so quickly. "Then I did the opposite of that," He smiled crookedly at the memory.

I opened my mouth to say something- anything- but nothing came out. He gently took his pointer finger and closed my chin for me, continuing:

"It was hard for him to complain about the customer-service with my steak and napkin shoved down his esophagus. I forget what happened to the slurping woman," he made a show of thinking hard for a moment. "But I think it had something to do with a steak-knife and her head resting on a cutting board."

"What the _fuck_is wrong with y-" I tried to yell but he cut me off for the millionth time. He had a nasty habit of doing that ever since we met.

"I know right?" he chirped, shrugging his shoulders. "Don't worry, Hun; I didn't let his steak go to waste. I ate it for him," He seemed proud of himself. "He was much better table company when he was asphyxiated- don't give me that look! They got what was coming,- but that woman's severed head kept staring at me….plus the steak _was_overcooked, after all…" he chuckled and wiped the inner corner of his eye. "Oops," He shrugged and connected his fingers over his stomach happily as if remembering the meal. "I don't think that restaurant will be getting much more business, though."

"You're…" I tried to make the words come out again, but couldn't continue over my swollen tongue.

"Amazing? I know, I know, but I haven't even gotten to the best part yet," he leaned forward for dramatic effect, staring wildly into my trussed eyes with a feral grin. "The guy I killed turned out to be the Kage of Sound's enemy, Matori Setaru!" he whispered and I felt his cool breath fan my chin. "So, after hearing of me, the Kage ended up calling me to his office and offering me a special position," he said proudly, elated in himself. At my confused face, he explained, "The Kage is like a president of the village. Much like Tsunade is where you're from."

"What do you mean, 'special position'?" I whispered, not sure that I wanted to know why this all pertained to me. It seemed that I would never get away from him and his chaos, and that thought didn't unsettle me as much as it should have.

"I'm working for Sound now," He said plainly, as if he didn't know or care how creepy it sounded. People who worked for Sound were not the kind of people that _worked_, if that's what he meant. Plus, I wasn't stupid. I knew what he was talking about, but I still wanted to hear it from his own mouth.

"I'm in charge of his new dispatch," He sat back in the chair again once my reactions were becoming boring to him.

"His what?" I turned my head, asking in a whisper.

"Dispatch, assassin, thug, slumdog, "_the man in the shadows with all the answers,_"" he reiterated with wagging brows and dark eyes. "Either one of those synonyms will work. Take your pick."

"You're going to kill for him?" I all but screamed and stood so fast that my head almost flew off through the ceiling.

"Well, yeah," he said as if I should have known all along. "What else am I going to do? Get a _normal_ job?" he said, like it were an impossible outcome, and raised his upper lip over his straight teeth in disgust with an almost audible huff_. _"Can you really picture me as _anything_but what I am? Killing people is fun in general; Doing it and getting paid for my services is an honor," He put his hand over his heart and closed his eyes lightly in reverence to show just how much of an honor it seemed to be.

"I still don't see why you need me," I admonished, shaking my head and sending my roseate bangs to brush my face. "But my professional opinion will be the same as the first time we met: you're raving mad…..and the outcome _is_ a tad bit interesting, to be honest," We smiled daftly at each other. "Do you know what your problem is, Sasuke?"

"No, but I bet it's hard to pronounce."

"You're a psychopath," I finally said. I had never told him straight-out before, in so many words. I had danced around the subject with him, but never actually said it out loud- not even to myself.

"So, that's your all-encompassing diagnosis, Doc?" he laughed.

"You're the worst kind, too; a charismatic, diabolical, compelling genius with a vendetta towards anything and everything that's humane or gets in your way. Just like every communist or totalitarian leader in history…Hitler was the same as you, but not as compelling, I guess," I drawled, circling my stiff wrist. I had been holding my pen so hard that it was becoming sore.

All he did was "Hn," for a moment. "I guess I'm meant to lead a country then," he sighed jokingly, and then there was a long pause of silent thinking.

"I guess I'm in on whatever's going on. After all, I can't leave you alone or the whole world could fall to shit. I don't want you accidentally becoming Kage or something while I'm gone. That would just be too cruel of fate," I accepted.

"Hold on before you commit to anything," he held up a finger and I looked at him strangely for his hesitation. "I have a little life-lesson for you; a metaphor, if you will-"

"Eugh! Please don't-" he changed subjects so fast that I didn't know what he was going to talk about next. _He_ was the one who offered me this and when I was about to accept, he stops me and tries to professor me?

"_Once upon a time, in the middle of the day, there was a sea turtle and a rattlesnake,"_he began in a clergy-like tone, a-melodically, letting out a loose breath and drawing a new one in to continue with-

"Sea turtles and rattlesnakes don't like each other enough to have a story together; let alone a rattlesnake be slithering around where a sea turtle is... Plus, rattlesnakes _sleep_ during the day," I thought I should point that out, but he continued as if I had never spoken.

"_You see, the rattlesnake sauntered up to the sea turtle and, with a hissy little voice like yours, he said, "Green Turtle, may I offer you a proposal?" But the turtle was wary of the stranger because she had just laid her eggs in the sand and was vulnerable to enemies. She was also small and weak compared to him, you see, and had a way of _always_ getting herself into trouble with the wrong kinds of people,"_ He gave me a certain look and for a second I didn't know if he was telling a strange story, like the way he usually did confusing things, or talking about _us_ in this metaphor of his.

"_But, still, she replied to the snake cordially saying, "Yes, you may," so as not to seem rude."_ He kept going, giving a voice and certain hand gestures to the turtle character that looked and sounded suspiciously like my own.

"_So the dangerous rattlesnake bowed his scaly head and played nice. "I hear that you have just laid your eggs, so I am guessing that other turtles are laying theirs as well," he began softly. "I was going to offer you a deal."_

"_What deal?" she asked, intrigued by his_ unusual _nature._

"_I will not eat your eggs if you will bring me across this gulf of ocean to the other side where I will find a different meal. I have heard that giant turtles lay their eggs on that beach and I would like a larger set of eggs to dine on," He explained good-naturedly._

"_That sounds nice, but how can I be sure you will not kill me while crossing through the water?" she asked, hesitant._

"_Silly she-turtle; I will do you no harm," he laughed. "If I killed you while crossing, I would drown and die as well."_

_The turtle lady decided that the snake's reasoning was sound and agreed to accompany him to the other side of the gulf._

_They set out on their journey as the sun was setting in the evening and the waters were calm and fare. The turtle's back was comfortable and strong, and the rattlesnake was becoming hungry because he usually ate at night. And as he looked down upon the turtle's bared neck, he licked his lips and chomped into the tender flesh with his long, slithery teeth._

_The turtle screamed, "Now we both will drown!" accusingly; and the rattlesnake replied, "Forgive me. It is in my nature. I could not be _anything_ more than what I am.""_

Sasuke finished his little parable and stood with a flippant wave of his hand, stretching his arms above his head with a relieved, content sigh. He seemed noticeably taller than he had the last time we had seen each other, but I tried to ignore the thought and the way his shirt slightly rode up from his heavenward-stretched arms.

"What did you tell me all of that for?" I asked after he had finished and returned to aiding the fire closely with his fingers, kneeling by the dibbet.

"It's just a preamble to the future, Sakura. That is all," He got up, shrugged and leaned forward- resting his hands upon my armrests until our faces were merely inches apart. "Think of this as a solatium in return for the inconveniences you suffered at my hand recently."

He held out his hand and I shook it quickly, before reason could show up and change my mind. "Deal?" he threw a dashing smirk into the closed air between us.

"It's a deal," I said. I had a tingling on my neck and a sinking feeling in my gut that I would end up getting bitten soon.

"Fine," he gave me a show of teeth triumphantly. "The Kage and I are going to need someone to do the boring, responsible work; that's where you come in handy, Little Miss. I'm going to be one of the financial elite and you will be my underling." He got up and walked to a large davenport covered in a cascade of contained alcohol in large, clear glasses. But he didn't pour any. He just raked his fingers across the bottles, listening with his head quirked and eyes closed to the harmonic jingling of his actions. "First things first, I guess," he sighed. "You can get yourself situated here tonight. Tomorrow we'll try to find somewhere to stay for the time being- and you'll need to meet the Kage. …Our first job is three days from now." He explained slowly to let it finally sink in, all traces of joking dropping from his presence.

I nodded and he left the room almost immediately. The unlatched, crookedly-hanging door scuffled and scraped across the old wooden floor as it opened and closed behind him.

"Goodnight," I whispered to his absent form and tried to find my way through the dark room to a better light source, but quickly gave up when I found the bed instead and decided sleep was much more attractive of an idea.

I dreamed again about Sasuke. He was lying with his head in my lap and his eyelids fluttered as he slept.

* * *

><p>"Wake up," his voice sounded faraway, garbled like his mouth was full, and I was still half asleep as I sat up in the bed and rubbed my eyes. The blanket had fallen to the floor during my tossing and the room was still a little chilly.<p>

There was barely any light through the window's thick curtains and the clock that had been hidden in the darkness the night before signified that it was only five in the morning. I growled and threw myself back onto the bed. "Don't you ever sleep?" I covered my head with my arms and rolled over to my stomach.

"Nmf," he stated simply and I guessed he said 'no' but it was hard to tell. I peeked out from under my arm to see Sasuke brushing his teeth with a bright pink toothbrush, as if nothing was amiss. He was completely at ease- knowing that, even with such a girly object in his mouth, he could never be looked at and thought of as anything other than the epitome of man. Cheeky bastard.

"Is that my toothbrush?" I mumbled into the sheets.

He just nodded a yes and walked away.

* * *

><p>By the time I showered and annoyed Sasuke enough into going out and buying me a new toothbrush (he ordered some guy standing outside the door in a suit to do it instead, the insubordinate prick), it was light out enough to be considered appropriate morning time. I was still holding a grudge against him for waking me up at such an unforgiving hour but he didn't seem to care in the slightest.<p>

The roads were soft dirt and villagers stared wherever we passed. I guessed it was because either Sasuke was known here (after the squabble in the restaurant he told me about, he was bound to be picked out in a crowd easily. People didn't easily forget things like that) or because I looked completely out-of-touch….again. They must have noticed that I didn't belong and I hoped that once I settled down that I could find some new clothes- or maybe get facial reconstructive surgery- to fit in better.

"Where are we going?" I asked, having to walk twice as fast as I usually did to keep up with his long strides. He was looking around for something, but I didn't know what. I never knew what he was ever searching for. I sighed, helpless.

"We're going to find somewhere better to stay," he put it simply. "If you haven't noticed, I'm not the kind of person to live in a place like the one we stayed in last night. We were only there for the time being because the Kage thought it would be better to lay you low for the first ten hours."

"Wait…" I stopped walking and he turned with an impatient gaze and a tapping foot in my direction. "We're living _together_?"

"Duh," he said out of the corner of his mouth and gave one particular man on the side of the street a glare for staring. "I'm not paying for two houses. Take it or leave it," But he looked back to me with an open expression to see my answer.

"This is looked down upon in some cultures, ya' know," I admonished, hoping he would change his mind and get hotel rooms instead. I caught up to him again and continued walking wherever he was leading.

"The lady doth protest too much, methinks," he stated. His voice sounded profoundly calm. It was the mirror of his face.

"Don't quote Hamlet to me," I worried my lip, biting it roughly with my teeth. I didn't know which direction we were headed but the rising sun was warming the air to a soothing luke-warm.

"What about Sophocles?" he asked, out of character.

"You're enough to drive me crazy," I sighed agitatedly then fixed him with a firm stare. He brushed my expression off and continued. He had been pushing my patience like this for the last few hours since waking up. Especially while I was in the shower; he had stood outside the door rambling about something or other to try and piss me off. I had almost barged out and smacked him at one sexually-conceited comment he made at my expense. He would say something surprising to get a rise out of me then cut off the conversation with something particularly crude, knowing I would not know how to reply to such a statement.

"That is the idea, Sakura," He licked his dry lips and continued to watch the shifting road of dirt under our feet.

"You're returning to your 'Id' state of mind and becoming more infantile every minute," I replied, not wanting him to have the last word. He would have to work for it.

"Freud is a fruit-cake," He challenged, eyeing me from the side.

"So was Sophocles."

"You're a clever speaker, but I am a bad student, for I have found you hostile and troubling to me," He quoted and it was the end of yet another battle of wits. He had won again.

It was a few more minutes until he turned onto a wider street with bitumen instead of dirt and a sallow building on the corner of a rather shady-looking neighborhood.

"We're here," he sang and climbed his way up the steps to the front entrance, holding the door open for me.

I walked in, looking to him over my shoulder, and threw him a lifted lip and ugly sneer when he gave me a widely-set grin. But when his eyes focused to look behind me his smile dropped immediately. I turned back around and stopped when I realized I almost walked into a metal object. It startled me enough to jump back to Sasuke's side and take a proper look at the contraption.

"What's your business here?" the tall, skinny man holding the gun towards us asked, looking only to Sasuke and ignoring my soft whimper. The weapon was long-ish and expensive looking- not that I knew much about guns at all- and I couldn't help but feel that he was trying to overcompensate for something. But the Uchiha didn't answer, instead keeping silent and staring challengingly back at the man as if he were not there at all. "I _said_-"

"I know what you said," Sasuke's voice was even more monotonous than usual and it put a strange tingle in the pit of my stomach. It was fierce and hollow. Its purpose was to degrade and control. But he still did not answer the question.

The offended man cocked the weapon and turned it from directing at both of us until it was pointed solely upon Sasuke, only a foot away from touching between his eyes. The man tried on a sneer, pulling his lips over his long teeth. He obviously thought he was quite frightening.

But- as Sasuke stared back at him with dark eyes focused almost directly down the barrel of the loaded gun, unflinchingly- the man seemed to waver in his own resolve. His sneer was replaced with awry confusion as he instinctually took a hesitant step back. Sasuke's impenetrable, hiemal gaze never faltered; perfectly calculating and instilling fear in its superior, animalistic quality. Sasuke knew that an unrelentingly unsympathetic and barbarous elucidation of expression could be far more terrifying than a gun in your face.

Perhaps it was the offending man's realization that Sasuke was immovable, or maybe it was how weak I was compared to the Uchiha next to me, that caused the man to point the gun in my face instead- looking for a better reaction that suited what he wanted in a victim. He got what he asked for as a surprised gasp filtered through my lips. The silence in the doorway grew even quieter and Sasuke's heavy footfalls echoed as he side-stepped in front of me. I was so much shorter than him that the barrel previously directed at my forehead was now pointed again at Sasuke, in the center of his sternum.

"What do you think you are doing?" the raven-haired man sucked on his teeth calmly and slowly grabbed the barrel from the other man, bringing it upward and touching it to his throat under his chin where it connected with his neck. He let it go, replacing his hand in his pocket and placing his weight on the balls of his feet. The two men stared at each other, challenging silently to see who would break first.

"That's quite enough," an authoritative voice cut through the room. A man in a long robe and large hat with a musical note embroidered on it stepped out of a heavy-looking office door, peering at the scene before him. The skinny man retracted the barrel from Sasuke's neck, throwing him one last shaky glance, and bowed to the robed man before leaning back against the wall where he must have been before we had entered. "I'm so happy you could make it. And you brought Sakura-san with you," he gave me a strange stare and his voice was like cracking bark in half, just as brittle and rustic.

"I did," Sasuke answered simply, not looking away from the man who leaned on the wall.

The robed man noticed his glare. "This is Gondo," he gestured to the wallflower-man, adjusting his large hat. "I have hired him to guard the entrance, but he seems to have taken a liking to his trigger finger lately."

"I can see that," Sasuke finished. The silence became awkward and everyone seemed to shift a little to the left. The Uchiha was a professional of turning these kinds of situations worse than they actually were.

"Next time I will make sure he behaves," the deep voiced man offered and gestured back to the door he had arrived from. "Please, follow me."

And we did.

* * *

><p>I didn't voice it, but I was sure that this was not where we were going to find the house that Sasuke had been talking about earlier. This was definitely not a realty division. It was something more sinister, more underground.<p>

Sasuke and the robed man spoke in charming voices that I did not understand, but I knew it was a language native to the region. Konoha and Sound were multicultural and politically indifferent to such things so it was natural that a counter-culture or sub-lingo would emerge in said areas. To think otherwise would only be an ignorant and redundant treatment of sociological reference. I merely surveyed the surrounding room while they spoke. The man in the robe laughed a lot and I guessed that Sasuke was warming him up- like he always did with others. Sasuke had a way of talking to people that could not be learned, only known, and nobody was immune to its charm.

"Sakura," I heard my name and perked up, sitting a little straighter. "This is the Kage," Sasuke addressed and pointed rudely to the robed man sitting at his lavishly sported monogamy desk.

"It's nice to meet you," I nodded to show my understanding and gave my generic reply in a small voice. The man was almost as intimidating as the Uchiha. Almost.

But the Kage ignored me completely, not even sparing me a glance. Like I was a useless child trying to play adult; needing to be seen and not heard. "I still don't see why you needed her," the man began what I could tell would be a lengthy notion. "We could find another suitable _man_ to take her job as your _assistance_," he intoned. "Women only complicate things, Sasuke, as you might already know-"

"No," Sasuke whistled lowly. "I don't know. Why don't you extrapolate?" I threw the dark haired man a sparing glance at his rudeness, but the Kage seemed to think that he was sincere. Perhaps I only realized the Uchiha's sarcastic, underlying meanings because I was used to pointing it out in conversation?

"As a great leader once said, "A woman should be barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen, and nothing more,"" the Kage quoted. "Women only serve for two things in life: sex and housekeeping," he laughed at his own joke, but he was the only one. "Money and Women: the two reasons that men make their worst mistakes in life. I'm glad I got rid of my wife before I became President of this village, or I would surely have gone mad."

Sasuke found this last sentence amusing, at least, and tilted his head to the side, letting out an amused grunt. "Mad, you say?" he asked, mostly to himself, but got back on to the subject at hand. "I have to say that I utterly disagree," Sasuke dug deeper into his seat. "Sakura here is more intelligent than most men you could probably find," at this the Kage scoffed in unbelief. "And she's much easier on the eyes," he joked and I didn't appreciate the Kage's guffawing at my expense. I was about to yell at the Uchiha but he gave a look that could have turned a kettle blue. I realized he was still warming the man up, trying to connect with him and make him think they were similar in beliefs. "Plus I would like something to keep me _interested_ if I grow bored in-between jobs, if you know what I mean," he raised an eyebrow and the Kage seemed to catch on quickly with a knowing smile and looked to me for what seemed the first time. This time he didn't look through me, but he did look me from head to toe and seemed to nod in some kind of agreement or understanding to what Sasuke had meant.

"I suppose you can keep her then," the Kage resigned from his snickering and sighed. "I wonder if you're willing to share?" the robed man trailed off, staring at my crossed legs. I felt my fists stiffen on my lap and noticed Sasuke's hesitance next to me from the corner of my eye. The Kage hadn't been paying attention to him, but I had very closely and it was the only reason that I had perceived it: for the first time, Sasuke did not know what to do. His shoulders were tense and his hand paused midway to wherever he was going to put it before the Kage's outburst. It hung in the air a few inches above the hand-rest, like he didn't know what to do with it, but- just when I was about to ask him if he was okay- he spoke with a predisposition of coldness.

"I'm a selfish man. I'm sure you understand," Sasuke seemed to hold his breath and his eyes were narrowed. His chest wasn't moving in an inhaling or exhaling motion anymore and I wondered why I noticed such a small thing about him.

"Sure, sure," the Kage agreed, but didn't seem serious about the agreement at all. My hands began to sweat. I wondered just how well the Kage_ thought_ he knew Sasuke and was surprised that Sasuke hadn't killed him yet. Sasuke, the man who killed people for sipping their drinks too loudly, was letting the Kage speak to him in such a way….it was just too strange.

And then it hit me. The Kage must have had something that the Uchiha wanted….something that he wanted badly enough that he was refraining from killing him. And I knew that the raven haired man wanted to kill him because I could notice his hand twitching slightly towards a sharp object to his right, as if trying to decide whether or not to pick it up and use it as a knife, before deciding against it and resting back on the armchair. "It was just a joke," the Kage tried to settle the growing tension.

"Ah," Sasuke nodded slightly. "Silly me."

"Don't act so cold, Sasuke-kun," the Kage admonished, referring to Sasuke's void expression. "We're working together now, which calls for warmer, friendlier greetings."

"You have no idea the amount of effort that goes into my casual disinterest," The black eyed man threatened, but I was sure the Kage didn't notice the underlying menace in his tone because he started talking in that smooth, foreign language again.

And I wondered again just how well the Kage thought he knew Sasuke. Because, he surely didn't act like everyone else did around the Uchiha. I was sure that Sasuke had not informed the Kage on his…medical condition, which must have been why the leader-man wasn't showing a little more propriety in his presence. If the Kage had known that Sasuke had killed those two at the restaurant because he had an unquenchable, uncontrollable thirst for blood and _not_ because he was some random thug like the guard at the front entrance, I was sure that he would not be speaking to him in such ways.

"So, how about it?" the Kage broke off into English, talking colloquially now, and I was glad that I could understand them. I would rather have listened to their conversation than my own thoughts at the moment. "It's a perfect opportunity to show you off to my colleagues and gain a little more trust for each other if we are going to be working together…..and Sakura can come, too, of course," he seemed to be hesitant saying the last. "Will you come to my celebration party? It's tradition to celebrate new merges in power between states," the Kage indulged.

"Perhaps," Sasuke looked the other way out the window, shifting his weight, and uttered in a rather unconvincing manner, "If I'm not too busy dusting china cabinets or shaving cats."

"Splendid!" the robed man exercised a loud, pleased laugh and Sasuke seemed to be becoming irked that he didn't take any of his witty remarks seriously. Maybe that's why he liked my reactions to his teasing instead; because I always _reacted_, unlike this man.

After that, all that occurred was the Kage's ranting about the perks of being his new dispatch (he seemed to be very in love with talking about himself and his power as president) and handed Sasuke a crisp parchment, ignoring me completely again as if I was an insignificant woman that did not belong. Maybe I _was_ at that moment, because it seemed that Sasuke could have done all of this on his own. He had told me that he needed me to do the "boring, responsible work" that he didn't want to do himself. But, I still wondered what the real reason was.

I didn't know him well at all- not as well as we should have known each other after what we had been through together (and it scared me a little that he knew so much more about me than I had about him)- but I did know him well enough to know that it was not the _only_ reason he wanted me to work with him (especially on something that I wasn't even really needed for). I decided that asking him to tell me the truth was out of the question. Sasuke could never be made to answer questions that he did not want to. So, I would have to wait and find out.

We left the office in silence, me following after the Uchiha like a lost puppy. Sasuke threw the door-man, Gondo, another threatening glare and the man held up his hands in mock surrender as we passed in a hurried pace. I could feel the Kage's eyes on my back as I left and I got the sensation that he knew something was amiss as well. He would not be Kage if he was not intelligent (even though he sounded like a misogynistic _toad_!) and it would not take all that much intelligence in the first place to notice what I had realized: Sasuke didn't need any help and I was strung along silently in a secret position- that not even I was aware of.

Sasuke was up to something. Something big; and whatever plan he was brewing was dangerous enough that he did not trust the Kage's men to work as his _assistance_, so I was there instead. And something more, but I couldn't put my finger on it.

"I'm going to kill Gondo," he muttered to himself and I had no doubt it would happen. I knew from the moment the man put the gun to us that Sasuke would think somewhere along those lines of retaliation.

I almost felt bad for Gondo and the Kage- for only a moment at least- because they didn't know what they were getting themselves into by surrounding themselves with Sasuke. I was at least aware of the danger I was putting myself in, but I accepted that danger because the only way I could help Sasuke was to stay by his side and gain his trust; and also to find out what his motives were in keeping me here. But, the Kage did not know of Sasuke's mental state, to put it lightly. If the Kage _had_ known, he would not have Sasuke working in a position so close to himself. The Kage did not know that having Sasuke so close to himself was to ask for death after the Uchiha got what he wanted out of him.

But, I also had to ask myself- what was the Kage's motives? Why was he hiring someone like Sasuke to work for him on such a precarious and dangerous thing? Even if the Kage didn't know Sasuke's medical background- or background in general (I didn't even know his past. It was something only the Uchiha was privy to)- he _had_ to realize that there was something in Sasuke, something deep down and unspoken, that begged to not be trusted.

"Are you really sure you can trust that Kage guy?" I asked the Uchiha when we were back out in the street and out of ear-shot from the building. I couldn't get the creepy gaze of the president out of my head and clutched my fist to my shirt for support. "Maybe you were wrong to decide to work for him…" I shut up when he held up a hand to silence me.

"I am never wrong, Sakura," he explained in a somewhat ephemeral voice and silent air about him. He seemed calm enough compared to how he had been in the small office space. "One time I _thought_ I was wrong, but I was mistaken," He trailed off and kicked the dirt underneath his feet lazily with his hands in his pockets. He seemed to ponder something silently as he walked with a forgotten smile, then scoffed at whatever it was he was thinking bout, shaking his head.

"Where are we going now?" I interrogated, retracting my nervous hand from my blouse.

"To our new home," he explained shortly, caustically. He handed me a piece of paper from the parchment that had an address written on it in elegant script. But, when I held out my hand for the rest of the parchment he still held, he would not give it to me. He pushed my hand away.

I sighed at the idea of his words. A home was the people who lived there, the sounds they made; the life they brought to the otherwise lifeless building. The place we were going was not a "home" because we were not a family. We would not make familial sounds in that place and we surely would bring no life to the building. The idea of the house would not change a thing. Everything would remain the same, and I was sure that Sasuke would certainly not change for the better. So, instead of a home, it was just a space to exist in- for the time being. Because, no matter how you thought about it or what you called it, it would never resemble a home. And home was too pretty of a word to be used in the same sentence when talking about the place we were going to.

I shook my head and tried to pay attention to the ground under my feet instead of the elusive man next to me, watching me from the corner of his eye.

"What's with the downtrodden face?" he asked, sounding truly interested- but I knew it must have only been a ruse.

"Nothing," I tried to sound more cheerful. I needed to stop depressing myself and focus on more important issues. I was more stressed than I had ever been just in the sixty-minute span that we had been in that office for, and the tension never left my body like it had Sasuke's. I could still feel the Kage's steely gaze.

Sasuke seemed to catch on to my thoughts the way that only he could. "I'm very intuitive, ya' know?" he held up a lecturing finger but left it at that. He wasn't one to continue pressing a subject that did not need to be talked about. If he did, it would only give other's permission to do the same to him. And, as a man of few- if not any- words, he was not going to unconsciously give me permission to use the same tactic on him when I wanted to know something in the future.

"It's nothing," I reiterated again, but he still didn't seem to believe me. I re-read the parchment and tried to memorize the address for future reference, but the words were only a sea of letters on a white background and my brain could not understand them.

"Where is this house?" I asked. "I mean- where's the road?" I looked around, but it didn't seem that we were anywhere close to our destination.

"Road?" He looked sideways at me, ephemeral in the mid-sky sunlight. His hair held small, almost unnoticeable tints of color that I couldn't name. "Where we're going, we don't need roads," he quoted in a wonton impersonation of '_Back to the Future_' and I sight in lack of anything interesting to say in return. He was at it again…

* * *

><p>When we had arrived to the house, my first impression was that I hoped I would not be the one playing housekeeper.<p>

"We're living _here_?" I asked, out of breath. Sasuke's walking was the equivalent to my jogging. He gave me a look like I was partially stupid and walked through the front door and into the structure. The building seemed to loom over the front yard and the shadow of the tall house converged over me and the sidewalk until it reached the street. There was a black car parked in the front of the house with two men in it and I noticed Brahm from the bus station the night before sitting in the passenger's seat, watching me closely. I didn't recognize the man in the driver's seat; the windows were too darkly tinted for such luxuries.

I leaned on the white fence, still standing defiantly on the sidewalk where it opened onto the path to the front door, and removed my shoes from my aching feet. We had been walking for God only knew how long after leaving the office and I was a little peeved that the car that could have taken us home was waiting for us here. Sasuke seemed to like walking if he chose to do that instead of calling Brahm to pick us up. I logged that into my memory-warehouse in a file labeled 'the psychopathic influence of Uchiha Bastards' to remember it later. If we were going to live together, we needed to know things about each other; otherwise we would risk Sasuke turning me into a human shish-kabob on the picket fence or me inflicting him with multiple stab wounds to the chest while he slept.…

Brahm rolled down the window of the dark car and it took me a second to realize that it wasn't for a breath of fresh air. I turned from the insultingly tall house and gave him a sparing of acknowledgement over my shoulder.

Brahm did nothing but point at me then point at the house, silently telling me to get inside, and rolled up the window- returning to his newspaper.

I stuck my tongue out at him and grabbed my shoes into my arms, entering the house with a dirty scowl.

It wasn't much different from the hotel we had stayed at in Suna before the soiree to find the Minister. It was larger, though, and quieter. I didn't even hear the ghosts of Sasuke's footsteps as he walked up behind me and whispered in my ear to shut the door. He abruptly turned down the hall into the kitchen and I heard the light ticking of a stove burner coming to life. I gave one last stare at the car before shutting the door and could have sworn I saw Brahm sticking his tongue out at me from behind the darkly-tinted glass.

I felt out of my own body again. Like I did the first time I joined him in that car in the desert. Like the first time I saw him kill someone; or helped him kill someone. I didn't know what to do in the walls that surrounded me. The television was on a song that I did not know and the walls were bright. The furniture was expensive- so different from my cheap furnishing in Konoha which seemed a million worlds away now. The hallway was long and wide with portraits and paintings in thick wooded frames and I didn't want to count how many doors were down that hallway; I couldn't see all the way down it because the lights were off so it seemed to lead to nothing but utter darkness. So I just stood in the entrance with my back pressed against the heavy door and my familiar shoes clutched to my chest. There was a large opening a few feet in front of me to my right and I guessed it was a dining room that connected to the kitchen in a round-about fashion. I could hear Sasuke rummaging through silverware somewhere in the maze.

I tried to readjust and searched the living room next to me. The T.V. was attached to the wall on the far side of the room and there were three sofas surrounding it with long tables covered in candles, decorative bowls, or magazines behind each. There was one elongated table in the center of the square that the sofas and television wall created. It held a few bags that looked like they were mine from the place we had stayed at last night.

I didn't pay attention to anything else in the large room and headed quickly to my bag, throwing it open and letting a relieved breath escape when it turned out that it indeed was mine after all. I was glad that at least one thing from my former life was still intact to the situation I had somehow put myself in again.

"Are you hungry?" Sasuke leaned against the wall in the opening of the dining room that connected to the kitchen with an amusedly saccharine look on his face. He removed a cigarette from behind his ear and placed it between his lips, testing the taste.

"A little," my voice was small and I cleared my throat to strengthen it again. "I think."

"You think?" he asked, and walked back through the dining room to the kitchen where I could hear pans moving. I didn't know he could cook and I logged that away in my memory-warehouse as well.

I followed him slowly and sat at one of the barstools at the stone island in the middle of the room. Pans hung on hooks above my head and made soft _tink_-ing noises as they connected lightly with each other every few seconds like a heavy wind-chime. I sat in the stool facing Sasuke's back as he was turned towards the stove in front of him. He bowed forward with the cigarette still in his mouth and moved the pan to light the cigarette on the burner. The smoke from the cigarette mixed in the air with the steam from whatever was cooking in the pan. The stove was in the center of the opposite wall I was facing at my seat and on both sides of it were slate stone counters that wrapped around the entire kitchen. The refrigerator hummed somewhere behind me and Sasuke walked to it. I watched him closely as he moved fluidly, knowing exactly what to do like I never did.

He pulled the door to the freezer open and brought out frosted wine glasses, grabbing a large bottle of wine from off of a rack on the counter behind me with his free hand. He glanced to me over his shoulder. "What?" he asked and I turned back towards the stove.

"It's nothing."

"You say that a lot," his voice was next to my ear again as he reached around my body and placed the frosted glass on the stone counter-top in front of me. I refused to look at him and kept staring at the stove. He let out a satisfied grunt and I heard a loud pop that startled me a little as he opened the wine bottle. He walked back around the counter to the stove, leaning over the stone top to pour it in my glass. I guessed he realized how tense my shoulders were when he was behind me. "You don't trust me, do you?" he asked with a strange frown that I couldn't put my finger on.

"Have you given me any reason to?" My throat was dry and I took a few sips of the dark liquid from the glass. It tasted like cranberry juice, but harsher.

"Plenty," he turned away with his own glass and leaned against the counter, staring at the stove I had been previously staring at. All I could see was the back of his dark shirt and his pale neck. The smoke from his cigarette swam through the air in a celestial dance towards the tall, vault-shaped ceiling.

I didn't believe him. He had never once done anything that made me think, _"Hey, maybe I can trust this guy."_ Most of his actions clearly had the opposite effect of inducing thoughts such as, _"Can you please give your story to the jury about this fucked-up incident?"_ though.

But he dropped the subject again and returned to sturring whatever was in the pan. I could hear the flames of the gas burner licking the bottom of the pan and sizzling its contents. The smell of peppers and meat filled the air and I guessed it was some kind of spicy dish. He liked spicy food. I logged that away, too.

"You're trying to figure me out," he stated, and it wasn't a question. "I know that look. The doctors at the asylum always looked at me that way..."

I didn't answer because, no matter how much I tried to deny it, he would know I was lying. I submitted and he was silent as he flitted the food onto a small plate and slid it across the counter top of the island towards me. I had to move my glass out of the way to keep it from being hit and gave him an exasperated look. He ignored it, or course.

"You can chose whatever room you want," he offered and that was the end of the conversation.

I wasn't really all that hungry but I mindlessly ate anyway, not really paying attention to my actions and running through the conversation from the Kage's office over and over again in my mind. Sasuke seemed to realize my in-deep-thought behavior because he didn't interrupt me. He waited patiently until I was finished eating, in the bar-stool across from me still, and watching me as closely as I had been watching him earlier. I didn't meet his eyes; I didn't have the strength to like he would have.

When I was finished he took my plate and placed it in the sink with his own. I was about to drink the rest of my half-empty glass but he reached over and disposed of his cigarette in the dark wine. "What the _fuck_, Sasuke!" he smirked at my lively outburst, so different from my previous thoughtful mood.

"I think we need something a little stronger, don't you?" he asked and I didn't know what he was talking about.

"What are you implying?" I asked, quirking my head confusedly. The man was a walking paradox.

"We could run amuck in the streets until we are tempest-tossed," he suggested evasively, speaking old-fashionably, and I gave him a look that I was nowhere closer to understanding what the fuck he was talking about. But he continued to not make any sense anyway. "In with the hellions and whatnot?"

"Huh?"

"Do you want to go somewhere and do something spontaneous?" he asked, as exasperated as I usually was, and ran a hand through his hair from his hairline to the base of his neck where he tugged on it slightly, waiting for my answer.

"I've never been spontaneous before and I never plan to…especially not around someone like you. Who knows what might pop into your head and I don't want you influencing me to do anything immoral," I shook my head, trying not to let myself imagine letting loose with the man- he was such a faucet, but I failed utterly and entertained a few scenarios in my mind. He seemed to know this and smirked, already knowing he had won.

"Never say never," he shook a finger at me in shame, ordering in nothing less than a sing-song notion of the lips. "Besides, I'm guessing you're tired of walking so…yeah. Don't worry; Brahm will drive us and the whole reason he's here is to watch out for you."

"Why?" I sounded disgusted, but my stomach did a tiny, strange and unfamiliar little jump at his words.

"The only one of us who will ever be safe in Sound is me; and I can't spend all of my time watching out for you. And after what Brahm told me almost happened at the bus station yesterday with that _boy_…"

"What almost happened at the bus station?" I asked, but he changed the subject immediately and dug around in his pocket for something.

"Here," he placed a small, oval-ish green object into my palm.

"What is it?" I held it in-between my pointer finger and thumb in the light to study it more thoroughly. "It looks illegal."

"This pill should make you feel like a hedgehog stuffed in a duffel-bag," he smiled and threw a little white one into his mouth that was different from my own. I knew what it was that he had taken because I had given it to patients before to control hormone imbalances in the brain (the kind that caused people to go on murderous rampages *cough cough*). I guessed he was only doing it because I had said I didn't want to do something spontaneous around 'someone like him', so he was doing me the favor of controlling himself with meds. I laughed at his grossed-out, faltery expression.

"That doesn't sound fun," I winced. I pictured myself locked in a duffe-bag and didn't find it looked very enjoyable at all.

"Oh, it is," he nodded, eyes closed. "Trust me." He ordered and handed me a glass of water.

I gave the pill one more look before closing my eyes and sighing. My heart was pounding and I was nervous. I knew I shouldn't have but, before I could stop my decision, I threw my head back, placed the little green pill on my tongue, and downed a large gulp of the clear liquid in the glass. I almost coughed up a lung at the taste and Sasuke laughed like a hyena. "It's vodka!" I exclaimed accusingly, pointing at the glass that I had thought was innocent water and pushed the offending aromatic mixture from my presence.

"Let's go," was all of the explanation he gave, which wasn't an explanation at all, and walked to the door, dragging me along by my upper arm. His fingers overlapped each other as they wrapped around my small appendage. "Wait," he stopped abruptly and I collided with his back after his hasty pause. He turned around and looked me up and down. I had the urge to cross my arms over myself. "Let's change first."

"What's wrong with what I'm wearing?" I challenged in a tone to imply that he had better not answer, but, of course, he did- overstepping boundaries of platonic by a far estimate.

"I don't like it," he answered and dragged me down the hallway into the darkness until I heard a light-switch click and light took over the end of the hallway, letting me see what I had not been able to earlier. There was nothing but a black spiral staircase with metal vines decorating the hand-railing. "Ah," he nodded and walked up the stairs to a square opening in the ceiling where he disappeared from my sight. "Are you coming?" he called, his voice was muffled by distance.

I walked up the cold, steel steps with my bare feet and headed into the un-adventured room.

* * *

><p>"Yes," Sasuke screamed in an impression of a woman faking an orgasm, holding up his hands in a square shape and looking at me with one eye closed through the hole of his hands. He made "Chk" noises like he was taking photographs with his makeshift camera and I turned to look out the window to hide my reddening cheeks. "I'm glad I thought of it," he sighed, still staring, and I tried in vain to pull the dress down to modest standards. Out of anything in that room, he chose <em>that<em> outfit. I growled under my breath. The t-strap heels on my feet were not doing anything to help their soreness and the dress was in danger of showing too much if I crossed my legs a certain way. But, I had to admit that he knew what a dress should look like on a woman. The black material was smooth and fitted at the waist, coming out to mid-thigh. It was not as nice as the black one he had bought me before, but that was because it was obviously a dress for a completely different kind of partying.

"Where are we going?" I asked and played with the button that rolled down the windows. I was sitting in the back seat of the dark car and Sasuke was next to me, fiddling with the strap of the shoe on my foot crossed towards him. He twisted it in his fingers, admiring the dark plum coloring that matched the waist belt on the dress. Brahm was still in the passenger's seat with the unknown guy sitting next to him driving. I threw my tongue out at Brahm again behind his back so he could not see me, secretly settling the score.

"To get some drinks and settle in. The night after tomorrow is when our first job is and we need to be loosening up before we do it. I don't want you as stressed tomorrow night as you are now and ruining all of my hard work and planning," he explained. He always did that. Whenever he started out something that sounded like it could possibly turn into a compliment or pleasant conversation, he would finish with a pseudo-insult and ruin the moment. It also seemed like all he did was make elaborate plans that worked to only serve one distant goal that only he knew of.

"What exactly does this 'job' entail, anyway?" I asked, trying to wipe the irritated look off of my face. I was annoyed also that he had not let me see the parchment the Kage had given him with the information about the job on it. He had burned it after reading it right in front of me for the fun of watching my face twist in anger. Sasuke stopped playing with my heel strop and took a drag of a cigarette I hadn't noticed him lighting. He exhaled, as if trying to figure out what to say.

"Top secret," he sighed knowingly. "It's hush hush; can't tell."

"How can it be a secret from me if I'm going to be doing it too?" I asked in an impossibly incredulous look like he was the one stupid this time. Brahm in the front seat quirked his head as if he were listening just as intently as I.

He hiked an eyebrow in surprise, but changed the subject and I gave up- too exhausted to continue. My head was feeling strange, like it was going sour. "That drug takes about thirty minutes to start working, so you should be feeling the starting affects now." I was about to ask him what the affects were, scared that he might have given me a hallucinogen and needing to be prepared in case I started seeing things. "We're here," he said plainly and lifted himself out of the car, but paused to tell Brahm to get out too before extricating himself completely from the automobile.

I followed him, trying to open the door myself but the handle wasn't working. My fingers were tingling like they were asleep. Brahm stepped out as ordered and opened my door for me, offering me his hand and helping me out. Sasuke stood on the curb of the sidewalk under the glow of the lights from the buildings in the distance, wearing an all-black ensemble. I swore he probably never wore anything but monochromes; having a penchant for hair gel and a closet full of black. He stared up to the sky as Brahm shut the door snugly and walked me to reach him.

Sasuke turned to Brahm with wide, dizzying eyes and made a strange hand-gesture that I couldn't put under my thumb. "Can you shadow her for the night?" he asked and Brahm nodded his answer. "She tends to get herself into sticky situations," the Uchiha finished and Brahm gave him a questionably raised brow to specify that what the Uchiha was saying was laughable. I _did_ tend to get myself into sticky situations- but one of those situations was specifically Sasuke, so it was funny to hear him refer to my tendencies of mistakes as if he were not one of them.

Sasuke led me gently through an alleyway toward the distant lights and the car stayed where we had left it. Brahm waited until he was fifteen or so steps behind us to begin walking, keeping that distance for what I guessed would be the whole night. "Where are we going?" I asked again and this time actually got a proper answer. My voice sounded feathery and whimsical like it wasn't me talking after all. He smiled down at me like he noticed too.

"To a club I think you'll like. It's right at the end of this alley." And it was. As soon as we stepped out of the darkness and onto the bustling street, almost bumping into a drunken couple and having to falter our steps, I had to let my eyes adjust to the lights. They were dim but so much different than the darkness of the cobblestone alleyway. We seemed to end up in alleyways and side-roads together a lot, I mused. Sasuke took me in a sharp turn on the sidewalk to the right and confronted a man at a large, bright red door. They didn't exchange any words and the man nodded, removing himself from in front of the entrance and allowing us entry into the building. It was made of bricks and I reached out my hand, feeling the rough texture. Sasuke waited patiently in the doorway, not going in until I realized I had been acting probably very strangely. He gave me a soft look that I didn't quite understand and grabbed my hand before the doorman could ask why I was being a freak.

I could feel my eyes- which sounded strange, even when I thought it. They were clouded and lazy-lidded but still bright and taking in the lights from the ceiling that were moving around the dance floor as the music and bass boomed, vibrating the floor and tickling the skin on the bottom of my feet. I made a strange, approving noise at the sensation that I knew Sasuke could hear but he ignored it, instead choosing to look for an open booth.

He tried to help me into the booth's seat but I refused, swatting his hand away and earning a chuckle from him. He sat across from me at the small table. The table was only about as big as two magazines sitting next to each other; just big enough for an ashtray and drinks to set on it.

"Are you alright?" Sasuke asked above the music and leaned forward, looking into my eyes. I didn't know if he was doing it like he usually did or if he was checking the size of my pupils, which I guessed were larger than normal. But he seemed to find nothing wrong with me even though I didn't answer his question. I had heard the words but didn't seem to be able to make my mouth move. "Don't drink too much or the affects will intensify," his voice seemed to vibrate and break apart until it sounded like three of him were saying the same thing at once, overlapping each other. Everything seemed to pitch to the left and I wondered if it was the drug or something else until I realized that it was because my head was tilted to the right. Sasuke laughed at my confused expression and whistled loudly with his fingers in his mouth. The lights were glowing off his skin; greens, blues, yellows, and reds. The red was my favorite and I kept staring and waiting for the other colors to pass before I could glimpse that red light illuminating his skin for a millisecond once more. He stared back unabashedly and untroubled.

I had never felt like this before and my heart was pounding. "W-" I tried to voice out but had to gulp down the lump in my throat to get what I was saying to work correctly. "What did you give me?"

"I forget what it's called-" he said and my heart sunk to the pit of my stomach at his words. "Yeah, can you bring us a bottle of Jack?" he asked a waitress that had answered to his whistling and she walked away. "Calm down," he told me, noticing my distressed face. "You're just Rolling," he explained. "It's like speeding but a little different." He looked around where we sat, trying to find something. "Ah," he said and grabbed a nearby ashtray, placing it perfectly in the center of the table until it was to his liking. "Your heart will go a little faster, but it's nothing to worry about. The only reason you notice it is because every sensation is intensified," he went on, lighting another cigarette. I had never knew he smoked that much, but I guessed it was only because of the atmosphere of the club. Everyone was smoking.

I leaned forward, staring at the cigarette, curious, and he offered it to me- understanding what I wanted without me needing to say anything. He held it out across the table with the filter facing me and I put my lips to it as he held it out, taking a small hit. I coughed and made a small "Eugh" noise at the taste. No wonder it had such a gross smell, it didn't taste any better. He shrugged and placed it back between his slightly parted lips. "You also should stay by me for the rest of the night 'cause it can get pretty intense after drinking. Rolling is a lot different than any other drug. It's like Adderall and Ecstasy put together, but not harmful or deadly. It's an anomaly…" he trailed off, studying how I reacted to the words. All I did was nod my head dizzily in understanding and prepared myself before taking a large shot he poured for me that the waitress had brought while he was talking.

The next few minutes were nothing more than a few more shots between us. I had never been a drinker but I guessed it was the feeling-a-little-more-well-dressed-than-normal, get-ready-for-a-night-of-craziness compendium of abnormal behavior that inspired me to actually let loose and "do something spontaneous", as Sasuke had put it.

But, I became to get a little befuddled as the drug really began to kick in and the alcohol's effect intensified it. My fingers were live-wires and felt like currents of electricity were buzzing through them. I held them up and examined the fingerprints on the tips of my fingers and laughed. "They're all different." I giggled in a high-pitched voice.

Sasuke laughed too, but at my words instead. I didn't care.

I touched the tips of my four fingers with my thumbs on each hand and rubbed them together. It felt ten times stronger than when I had done the same thing without Rolling. I looked to Sasuke at my right. I couldn't remember how I had gotten there but at some point I either moved in the booth to sit beside him or he moved to sit beside me. I ran my hand through his hair and he looked at me with a halfway startled expression. It was softer than my fingers had felt, and that was saying something. He coughed awkwardly when I kept doing it and shifted in his seat a little. He removed my hand and placed another shot in it. I guessed it was because touching was something that we did not do. The only other times we had _ever_ touched each other was when we danced in the hotel room and when Sasuke tied me up at a motel, leaving me for ransom.

I put the shot down on the table instead of drinking it- I didn't want to intensify the pill any more than it already was- and got up as fast as I could, running into the dance floor between the multi-colored lighting. Sasuke ran after me with a wicked glint in his eye.

* * *

><p>I tried to remember how I had gotten in the bathroom but all that came up was a blankness in my mind. I was standing in front of a sink with the water running and a florescent light flickering above me. Someone was behind me, but I couldn't remember who until Sasuke spoke from where I felt the presence in a soothing voice. But I didn't pay attention to the words. He grabbed my hair and pushed his cool palm on the back of my neck, guiding my mouth to the running water where I took long gulps. I didn't realize how thirsty I was until I took the first sip and couldn't stop after that. The coolness calmed my heated body. I was sweating a little and hoped he wouldn't notice.<p>

"Sakura," his voice sounded like he was ten feet away even though he was right behind me, bending over with me to make sure I drank like I was supposed to. I made a noise in the back of my throat to let him know I was listening while taking a few more gulps and splashing the rest of the cold water on my face. My pores screamed and closed shut in alarm. "Do you want to leave?" he asked like he was worried. I didn't know why he sounded like that and I tried again to wonder what happened between being at the booth and appearing in that bathroom but nothing came to mind again. "You've been dancing for three hours. I think you need a rest." His voice was hushed and the light hummed even louder when I looked up at it.

"Let's just go outside," I sounded out of breath and soft again, like I was half-asleep, but I couldn't make my voice normal. He hurried me outside into the cool air and my head-ache cleared a little, which I was halfway thankful for, but it did nothing for the dizziness of the pill that was still coursing through my blood system- full speed. He lit another cigarette and leaned against the brick wall across from me with one leg straight and the other bent so the soul of his foot was flat against the wall.

I slid down the wall and felt the bricks scratch the back of my bare legs where the dress did not protect my skin. "You would not have incurred this problem if you would have only listened to me…" he lectured and I wondered what he was talking about. "Drinking: the well-rounded, stupidity-induced activity of socialites which requires determination, patience, and time. Lots of time."

"What?" My voice was almost not there, but he heard it anyway. I guessed the wind had brought it to him, helping me out. My head kept lolling to the side, like my neck wasn't strong enough to hold it up anymore. But when I finally got it up, it would loll again to the other side and the battle would ensue once more.

"You shouldn't have drank so much," he explained and flicked the cigarette somewhere down the alley. I couldn't see Brahm anywhere but I knew he was somewhere guarding the alley from anyone trying to walk down it. "You're probably fucked-up and I don't know how long it will take to get out of your system now…" he trailed. "The first time I took it, it only lasted about eight hours..." I knew why he had trailed off and what he didn't want to say. With someone like him, whose body was used to different drugs (a mental hospital, like the one he was in, would rather drug the patients than spend precious time to try and cure them), would be used to the effects of the pill and they would, therefore, leave his system quite quickly. But me; I had never taken a drug in my life- apart from Aspirin- so the effects would gratuitously take longer to flee my blood stream. I sighed. I would be stuck like this for who knew how long. I bet to myself that Sasuke knew this, too. He just liked to demoralize me. He was trying to turn me more like him by pushing me further and further toward the line from normal to Sasuke-like. And I was arriving there fast.

I looked up at him from my seat on the cobblestone ground and made a sound of agreement that he seemed to like better than my usual sassy remarks. I leaned forward, ignoring the short length of the dress this time, and removing the shoes that Sasuke had seemed to like so much. He sighed disappointedly but then averted his gaze to my face instead when I guessed he noticed that he could see up my dress. He might have been heartless, but he was also a gentleman.

I liked the feel of the wind on my legs and sighed, leaning my head back on the hard wall. We stared at each other disjointedly, both pink cheeked from the alcohol and enjoying the night air. "Hey, Sasuke," I called but he was already looking. But it seemed that the longer I gawked at him, the longer he just wasn't going to know what I wanted until I said it. "Is there anyone that you've ever cared about before?" I asked and I didn't know why the though had popped into my head, but wanted to know the answer anyway.

His eyes softened and seemed to darken in sadness. "Ah," he focused his eyes faraway down the alley, averting from looking at my face. "I was precious once. I belonged to my mother."

Water droplets fell from the roof's gutters into puddles somewhere surrounding us. My lead lolled again, uncontrollable; just like him.

"What was she like?" I asked. My eyes began to droop but I didn't know how to open them again, so I settled for letting them close to rest themselves. They deserved a break.

There was such a long silence that I didn't think he was going to answer me and I waned in and out of light sleep until his voice cut through the shadows of the setting sun on the horizon. I felt like I was hovering above the ground and floating towards the wind when his voice startled me enough to wake me up, but I still couldn't open my eyes. "She had brown eyes and small hands…..with a rusty little attitude like yours." I raised my eyebrows and made a weak "Oh?" to let him know I was still listening. I didn't know if I was dreaming or not because Sasuke's voice sounded fuzzy and faraway again, but I could still just make out his deep tenor and meaning of his words before there was utter silence. "My mother had a way of seeing the world that she was in….it was very dangerous for others around her. She had a way of making you believe in impossible things. But my father fell in love with his liquor- he fell in love with it the way my Mother and I fell into creating a world together that did not exist. Then one night he came home, accused her of cheating on him, and broke her neck. I killed him for that. I could smell his blood in the air. And I swear, in that moment, I felt immortal." There was nothing but the sound of wind bustling in to fill the silence after that. He was talking to himself this time.

I could feel Sasuke's warm hand make its way around my back and under my knees, hoisting me off of the ground. "Sir?" Brahm's deep voice was coming from somewhere close and my head was resting on Sasuke's shoulder. I snuggled my face more firmly into the crook of his neck where I could feel his strong pulse on the ridge of my nose and sighed. He made a disapproving noise at my cold nose touching his skin. I knew I was still awake, though I was so worn out, but I couldn't move my heavy body or succumb to sleep. I was in limbo between the two.

"Hm?" Sasuke murmured quietly, trying not to wake me. I didn't know how he was carrying me so far without any difficulty at all. I could feel my shoes dangling off of my feet and swaying with each step he took, but they never fell off.

"Whatever it is you're planning, I don't want her to be one of the unlucky people around you who tend to die," and I was surprised with how forceful Brahm's voice sounded.

There was a pregnant silence and Sasuke's arms stiffened momentarily under me. "Ah."

And the next thing I knew, I was alone in a warm bed at the house. Too warm, I thought, and unbuckled the belt around my waist lazily before tossing it to the ground, but it didn't help ease the heat as much as I wanted it to. The only thing it accomplished was stopping it from prodding me in the back. I rolled onto my stomach with a groan and looked to the clock on the nightstand. I couldn't read the green flashing numbers; my vision was still cloudy and my senses were still on high. The hotness of the room was stifling and it felt like the dress was trying to fuse itself to my skin. I got up with a huff and stalked out of the room, almost falling into the dresser on the way- my knees were asleep and ankles weak. The lights down the hall were on and I could hear the television humming low in the background, not high enough to understand what was being said until laughter struck through the silence from the audience. I walked to the living room to find Sasuke sitting in a chair against a wall, holding a glass filled with what I guessed was scotch and staring into nothing. The ice clinked around in the glass whenever his fingers moved once he noticed my presence approaching.

"You look like hell," he said it like it was a statement but put the upper inflection in a strange place, making it sound like half of a question.

"I _feel_ like hell," I sighed and walked past him. My voice was a little stronger but my tongue was still swollen feeling and my head was hard to understand. The electricity in my fingers was now through my whole body, keeping me awake. I wanted to ask what was wrong, but I didn't know how to word it. My thoughts were too fast to put together a sentence before a new thought would pop up and take its place. I didn't even understand the expression on his face to be able to know if I should ask or not. I didn't know if it would be appropriate. He didn't say anything back. No witty remark or jab at my self-esteem. So I leaned back on the table at the back of one of the couches, a few feet across form him. I seemed to get in the way of wherever he was staring at and he ebbed out of his thoughts, looking up to me from his seat.

"Are you okay?" I asked lamely and he sneered, annoyed with my compassion. The distance between us was suffocating but seemed to stretch to infinity, like a road to absolutely nothing between us. He didn't answer.

At times, Sasuke had the nasty habit of withdrawing from reality and retreating to his own anamnesis, forcing the people around him into nothing but trite and useless trinkets that only served to abate him. He was both an introverted and extroverted person by nature, by condition.

I was used to this behavior. I had expected Sasuke to act this way at some point. A person who is only capable of false emotions- never any true, tangible connections with the people around him; always having to create those emotions out of thin air and make it seem real to others to fit in- was sure to be exhausted by all of the effort at some point and need recuperation time. I pictured this as Sasuke's convalescence of the exhaustion he inflicted upon himself and others around him.

"No. No, that wouldn't work…." he whispered to a silent thought in his own mind. "I can't seem to plan anything correctly right now…I shouldn't have taken that medication. It screws with my brain." He rubbed his temples. "I can't act like I normally do. I act more like _you_," He said like it was depressing and looked back up to me with the same faraway expression he had worn the night before leaving me tied up in the motel. His brows furrowed, setting his drink on the table next to him that he had obviously moved from somewhere else in the house. The condensation from the outer rim collected around the table where it sat on the polished wood. He gestured for me to come closer. I pushed off of the table my lower back was leaning against, taking light steps on the cold floor until I was a few feet in front of him. But when I stopped he made an annoyed grunt again and reached his hand out fast, startling me. I flinched and felt him grab the bottom of the dress, pulling me forward until my knees hit the seat of the wooden chair between his own legs. The fabric rustled in his hands, making light noises of protest. I could feel my heart racing in frightened uncertainty until he did nothing but release the hem of my dress, place his forehead on my stomach, and let out a comfortable breath from his lungs. His hands were warm as they snaked around my legs, after a tense moment, to grasp firmly onto the back of my thighs, bringing me closer to the chair and holding me there like he was afraid I would try and move away.

I waited what seemed an eternity. "What's wrong, Sasuke?" I placed my hands in his hair, running them on his scalp again and he hummed in approval. "You can tell me." I couldn't bring my voice higher than a whisper. I was afraid something would break if I spoke in any other fashion.

"Don't treat me like one of your patients, Doc," his voice was menacing and his hands clasped tighter onto my skin. My knees were tensed. I couldn't loosen them no matter how hard I tried until I realized that I was recoiling because I was preparing to run if I had to. Sasuke was frightening me in his unusually languid behavior and I didn't know what he was going to do next.

He had been different in the alley when I had asked him about his mother. He had answered me kindly, without his usual double entendre or opulent attitude towards me. I knew I shouldn't have asked, because I remembered what he had told me he had done to his family, but I hadn't been thinking.

_"I killed my family when I was younger. I can't remember why, but the idea just _popped_ into my head and I slaughtered them in their sleep!"_ His voice rang in my head. He had said that on our first day together in the Suna desert after he had stolen a car- without conviction- as if he didn't care that they were gone, never to be seen again, because of him. He had wiped them off the face of the earth. I felt a chill through my body.

It's strange, isn't it? One day a person is walking around, going to work and returning to their family in the evening. Then one day they just disappear…

"I wasn't trying to. I-" I tried to figure out how to finish that sentence, but gave up after a moment of uncomfortable silence. "Can I ask you something?"

"You're too nosy," he said, but it wasn't a 'no' so I continued. I could tell that the pill he had taken had suppressed, maybe even surprised, his mind- because he usually would have said something along the lines of, "Only if you want to die."

"Why did you kill your father?" There was a silence that was even colder than his hard grip on my thighs. "Sasuke?"

"Get." He ordered and extracted himself from my body. The cool air hit the place on my stomach where his warm forehead had been and I noticed how empty it felt now. And the way he ordered me was even more frightening than his blank, dead expression. "Get out." His words were nothing less than a snarl and I retreated back to the unfamiliar room I had come from. He had banished me from his sight, retracting the closeness he had so unnaturally bestowed upon me. I locked the door behind myself and slid down the door until I sat, alone and cold, on the carpeted floor- wondering how much longer I would live.

* * *

><p>"<em>Do you not like my cooking anymore, Sasuke-kun?" Mother's melodic voice questioned with her back towards me, facing the cutting board across the kitchen and slicing apart an onion with perfect grace. I continued to scramble my food across my plate, never taking a bite, and working on some math problems.<em>

"_I'm not hungry, Mother," I replied sulkily. She must have known by my tone- she always knew, but she kept her eyes on the cutting board to save my pride- that something was bothering me._

"_No, of course not," she answered and, if I had been older, I would have known she was humoring me to speak whenever I was ready to. "Did you know that a bat can detect food up to 18 feet away and can also tell what kind of insects might live in the food by using echolocation?" she asked in her perfect way of changing the subject but also staying on topic at the same time. Her speaking was always indecisive like that: like she never knew which way to go- either that or she did it with a secret purpose in mind. She saw the world in a way so different from Father- and I knew that, if it weren't for their arranged marriage, they would never have been together. They would never have started their small family- never would have created me, if it weren't for that. It was a small thing that changed everything. Mother saw the world like a writer saw a blank piece of paper, waiting to be written on. My father pictured a blank paper as nothing other than what it was- a white sheet._

"_No, I didn't know that," I answered._

"_You don't usually act like this with me, Sasuke," her cutting faltered a little and slid onto the cutting board loudly, then continued as if nothing happened. "I know your and your father's relationship isn't ideal, but you and I are different, right?" she tried to make her voice sound forlorn in a slightly joking manner, but I knew it was half-contrived and half-sincere. "Why do you think that is?" she questioned, trying to get me to finally succumb to her prodding. She knew I would eventually tell her. We hid nothing._

"_When I scour your existence for hidden purposes, I find none. Father is full of them, though," I remarked, answering her question quietly._

_She sighed at my longevity. "You may be only ten, darling, but you speak as if you have lived many lives," she walked over to the table beside me and patted my head, ruining my hair. I gave her a false scowl, pretending I didn't like the familiar gesture. "My smart boy," she smiled a smile similar to mine and sat in the seat of the table next to me, playing with her long black hair and watching the sunset out of the small window over the kitchen sink. I shifted my weight awkwardly and the chair creaked loudly._

"_Do you love him?" I asked her and she gave me a look she usually gave me when I asked her questions she didn't want to answer. But she knew she wouldn't lie to me or treat me as if I were too young to know the truth._

"_Your father and I…our relationship is complicated, Sasuke," was all she said for a moment, formulating what to say next that wouldn't sound harsh. I could tell she wanted to say something more abrasive about Fugaku, but she did not want to put me in a position to choose to believe her opinion of him or my own. Then she continued, "I love him, but not the same way I love you," she smiled gently and retracted her hands from her hair, straightening them before herself over the table and stretching. "But, what is important is that he loves us in his own little way that might not be easy to understand, but it _is_ there- deep down. He has emotions, but does not like to express them the same way you and I do. You and I are different from others, never forget that. It's what makes us so special to each other."_

_I nodded, carefully trying to make her words stick in my mind forever. Her voice, though, I would never forget. "Is it wrong to hate him?" I asked, finally looking up to her dark eyes. She smiled, which I was glad for, but I didn't know why she always looked at me like that; like she felt sorry for me- sad at my existence._

"_It's only wrong if you don't truly mean it," she explained, leaning towards me with an intense set of her mouth to show me that I needed to listen. "Sometimes I feel that same way, but then I remember that he gave me you- and I can't hate him anymore after that." We smiled daftly at each other for a moment more. The clock in the hallway ticked 93 more times in the silence._

"_I think Father's getting suspicious," I returned to my math so I didn't have to look to her face. "He knows what you've been doing and he's just waiting for you to admit it to him." I tapped my pen in an unknown rhythm against the edge of the table, trying to ignore the roughness that this topic caused for me. "He found your letters where you hid them in the attic and I think he is going to confront you about them. Knowing Father, he will be unforgiving," I tried to warn, but I didn't know if I was warning her or myself. "He will do something unthinkingly, the way he always does."_

"_Let's not talk about that, Sasuke," she abruptly got up, trying to pretend I hadn't said it. In all the memories I had of her, she had never once raised her voice, it was against her. But when her voice turned harder- not cold, but more central to her midsection- was when one knew she wished she had it in her to yell. No, she did not want to raise her voice to me, but she wished she didn't love me so much that it kept her from doing so. "We already agreed that it would be a silent thing. I would not have been so honest with you about it if I didn't think you understood the reasons why I do it and why it must never be talked about." She began chopping again- this time spices from her secret garden behind the large tree in the back of the house. We had planted it together the year before when I had turned nine._

"_I understand the reasons perfectly," I tried to explain, scowling at my homework. "I know what married people do behind closed doors," I would have said what I really meant but she would wrinkle her nose in discontent whenever I said the word 'sex', so I just trusted she knew what I was talking about. "I've watched you and father around each other enough to know that more is needed in marriage other than the ability to tolerate the presence of the other. If you love this other guy you've been seeing, and even if you don't, I will not break our secret. You know that." She giggled, finding it amusing that I was lecturing her from my small seat across the room. But her humor-filled face dropped almost immediately at her next thought._

"_Sometimes I can't help but wonder if I am raising you right?" She seemed to be interrogating herself, trying to find the answer that always eluded her question. Her shoulders were stiffening more with each word. "Sometimes I wonder if the things I tell you or let you know are the wrong things- things that no one should know, no matter what their age," her hand paused completely in thought before she noticed her foul-up and regained her cutting rate once more. "Sometimes I even feel like the words I tell you are so right, then sometimes so wrong- I confuse even myself. Father and I have talked about it a lot lately and he believes that I am corrupting you with my thoughts," I couldn't see her face from my seat, for she was facing the other direction, but I saw her hand come up quickly to swipe languidly across her pale cheek before dramatically loosening her shoulders and sighing, like the feeling of walking after sitting for days. The back of her hand held the slightest glimmer of moisture, moved and then forgotten._

"_You could never have enough power over another person to be able to do that," I tried to console her. I didn't mean for it to sound like I was calling her weak- for she could never be thought of by me in any way other than the unrelenting structure my life leaned against. But for her to think that, even for a moment, she- with all of her purity and kindness- could corrupt another person was enough to put a bitter taste on the back of my tongue. I swallowed hard, trying to dislodge the taste back down to wherever it had come from, but it stayed all the same. "After all, it's what makes us so special to each other," I used her earlier words against her gently and the bitterness in my mouth dissipated when she threw out a shaky laugh, whipping her eyes and hair from her face and setting her expression anew. "If seeing this other man will make you happier than Father can, I will never stand in your way. And I won't let father either." I added on and she gave me a red-eyed sniffle- knowing that I would not be able to defend her form Father the way I wished I could, and also letting me know she understood what I had meant in a way that only she could._

_Our language was of words, but more so of movements and of time. Father sometimes became frustrated with us because of this- he called them our "silent meetings"; something unhealthy that natural people would not do. He claimed that raising me in such strange ways would only set me that much further apart from the rest of the world. Mother had asked him what was so wrong with that, but he didn't answer- he only commented that his son should be more like _him_ than his estranged mother. I had been sent to bed with no supper that night for laughing at him- being similar to Mother was what I pictured as the closest to being accepted into heaven. That night, I heard them argue in the living room- Mother was silent, just like how she believed the world should be. I knew she was watching Father, trying to see something in front of her that was not really there unless you looked close enough to touch it with your nose and smell it. Father had repeated the same questions to her over and over until he became frustrated with her lack of response and left, slamming the screen door in a way that Mother would not do; she would have found a more poetic way to convey that she was angry. He had accused her of trying to make me see the world through her eyes, because she didn't want to be alone- because she didn't want to be the only one who was crazy._

_I didn't think he was right. Mother didn't either, but sometimes I would ask her a question that she would normally have answered in her usually colorful way. I had asked her after Father left that night why it was so important to think like each other, and she simply said it was important to think and come up with answers to one's own questions- and it was as simple as that. I never got the answer to that question, no matter how much I asked and how many times I found different ways to word it. So, just like she advised, I came up with my own reason: It was important because it was important to Mother. She was a little different after Father had accused her of manipulating me into someone like her who "should be committed to the nearest asylum", as he had put it._

_Mother said she would rather be considered insane than thought as normal. To her, being like the world outside of us was unforgiveable._

_Before father refused to keep 'putting up with our silent conversations' we used to sit across from each other at sun-rise with our legs crossed on the hardwood floor that became permanently scratched when I was five from scraping our toes._

_(Mother said it was the time of day that was best for our silent meetings and I sometimes didn't sleep at all, waiting for the sun to glimmer over the horizon. But, no matter how early I awoke on those mornings when we both knew something great would come out of our encounters, Mother was already risen and waiting for me on our spot of the floor- two cups of tea steaming before her on the abused wood. Father still slept alone in their bedroom; the sheets on Mother's side of the bed seemed to become colder each passing sunrise.) We would deem it the day's agenda to simply sit and bask in the presence of the other, speaking without speaking- many times my homework would go neglected and we even forgot our body's need to eat. The mail-man would sometimes throw strange looks from the door, but we hardly ever noticed him._

_Sometimes we would break the quiet, telling the other that we understood whatever it was that their gaze had wanted them to know. Our silences were saying things too important for mouths to utter- and this was what Mother said made us so different._

_She truly believed that we had stared enough at each other in those few years that, no matter where we were later on in life, we would always be able to know what the other was doing._

_Father may have called them the dirty name of "silent meetings", but Mother knew better. She hated Father's name for our meetings and called them the more appropriate title of "familiar anamnesis". She always did, because she could see the part of it that a normal person could not; she could see the fifth side of a square, she once told me- and I spent the next week in math class trying to figure out where that fifth side was hiding. _

_Soon after their fight when Father refused to allow our morning routine, Mother decided to never let me forget how lucky we were that our souls found one another. Since Father wouldn't allow our meetings anymore, I guessed she kept reminding me so that it would seem as if nothing had changed. We would still uncover the same things about each other and the world as we had with our silent meetings, but we were forced to do it with words after that- Mother hated it. I don't think she could even bring herself to look at our spot on the abused wooden floor after that._

"_I can remember when I was pregnant with you- I was lying in the grass one day, watching the clouds, and when I blinked I caught a glimpse of your face. I knew it was you because I felt your little body in my tummy move, and that's when your soul traveled its long and cumbersome path to me. Out of anyone else on the planet, we chose each other instead. Can you imagine how lucky that makes us; how blessed? Our souls, who thought they were individual but were really the _same_ all along… We were both lost and alone, so different from everything else and we didn't have anywhere to go." Whenever she told me the story she would sigh and I knew she was wishing she could tell me silently like we used to- because saying it out loud tainted the memory on her lips. "But we found each other. We found each other on a summer day in June."_

_I couldn't count how many nights I stayed up attempting to understand what she was trying to make me understand each time she told that story, trying to repeat it so many times that it would be impossible for me to forget that I was hers- and she mine; forever. Father was usually at work, very seldom home, so the house was never interrupted with anything but the sound of Mother in the kitchen, sitting in the window and turning dusty pages of the same old book, or in our secret garden behind the tree. At the time I understood that the reason she allowed the silence was because she believed we could still communicate our thoughts, even in different rooms, just like we had before._

_As long as it was silent, we knew. And that way Father wouldn't know what we were doing. That way, he wouldn't be able to stop us._

_Usually while lying awake on those nights, trying to understand Mothers words, I would remember things. I would remember when we were sitting in our spot once at dawn, watching each other silently with empty tea glasses at our sides. She had admitted that Father's accusations of her corrupting me were true; she didn't want to be the only one who wasn't normal and she was thankful that it didn't take much effort to make me similar to her- it helped her to pretend that she wasn't doing something that was wrong. She didn't want to admit to herself that she had to manipulate me into what she needed because admitting it to herself would make her love me less._

_She didn't have to say all of that in words because it was as if I heard her thinking it, the way that only we could do; we only needed to sit on the hard wood floor and watch each other. And I felt ashamed when I pretended to not see that confession or apology in her eyes, because I knew she saw my denial and shame in mine. I also wanted to tell her that she had underestimated me; I could not be made into anything I was not, even if she thought she had that power. She saw it in my gaze and understood. She understood finally that I was truly the same as her after all and that we could continue to see our own world together, no matter how depraved or selfish she thought she was for it._

_That was the last day we had our silent meeting; I was eight and Father would allow it no more. Mother was happy that it was our most important conversation yet. "We can end it, for now, knowing that we shared the most important thing before it was over," She had said, but I could see the sacrifice in her eyes. Fugaku taking away our time together would hurt her more than I had thought- our time was what held her. "At the end of a person's life there is a garden that looks like ours, but bigger. It's where people go when they have nothing holding them to the world anymore… And it is beyond the ideas of what 'real' or 'alive' is, where words don't even _exist_. One day, I will meet you there…" Then she sighed. She sighed and chose to look at our garden instead of me, because I would have heard what she truly wanted to say if I had seen her eyes. "Never forget what we've learned about each other. Never forget who you belong to or the world we created."_

_I snapped out of my thoughts and back to the kitchen with Mother cleaning her spices and onion chops over the sink, humming to herself. So different from the downtrodden person she was moments ago. Sometimes I wondered to myself if she could still feel my thoughts and emotions like I still could with hers, but I tried to think it quietly so she wouldn't hear me. It had been two years since our last 'familiar anamnesis' and by that time it sometimes felt as if they had never happened at all- like I made it all up in my head, just for the sake of my mind trying so desperately to understand Mother. She herself seemed like someone who could only exist in a thought, never anything tangible. The things she said and did were so unlike that of anyone or anything else that I wondered if her mind was really a mind at all. I couldn't bring myself to believe that a person was so capable of rearranging the entire universe with just one sentence._

_Mother never finished washing the spices and I never had the chance to ask her if she could still feel me from across the room._

_Because Father came home from work early, the lights of his car shining through the kitchen window where Mother was standing and she hurriedly turned to me, grabbing my still-full plate of food from the table and rushing me through the house to the back door. She told me to sit in our secret garden- not to come back until I could remember that summer day in June, just like she could._

_I didn't know how long I tried to remember. I could hear Father's raised voice from across the yard, through the house and in their room. Mother was silent, as always, as Fugaku slung his accusations at her. I could almost picture her sitting with legs crossed on the bed, looking up at him in what he would take as disrespect, but that was only because he didn't see what it truly was- how I would have seen it, how _she_ would have- in the fashion of a blank piece of paper, waiting to be written on. Mother didn't have the heart to retaliate and defend herself from his voice, just like she didn't from me. So she sat in silence, trying to understand the scene before her and never denying his accusations, knowing them already to be true. It was her silence that had always angered him, even more than her unfaithfulness in their marriage._

_And I still couldn't concentrate on remembering June when the argument cut off. It was a silence afterward that Mother did not create; it wasn't gentle enough to be her silence. But I stayed in our secret garden until I could imagine, at least, finding Mother on a grassy knoll somewhere and what the inside of her stomach must have felt like. The silence wasn't broken again as I passed Father's room some hours later on my way to bed and Mother wasn't reading in her living-room window._

_And, in the morning, Mother was not home while Father went to work. In the evening, Mother did not return to ask me if I could remember June._

_And for three weeks Mother was never mentioned. Father didn't mind my silence then as much as he had when she was around. And I didn't worry about her- believing she would return soon with a broad new scope of ideas and thoughts for me- until I could smell her body decaying under the house where Father had stored her, visiting her every night in his own secret meetings with her. And when it was six weeks, I could smell Father's atrophy as well from where I had stored him, lying by her contorted neck in the small crawl-space beneath the house._

The audience's laugh from the television buzzing in the background lulled me slowly out of my reverie. I decided I would have to find something more than scotch to entertain myself, because it obviously wasn't helping to keep the memory of that woman out of my head.

I had done so well to forget _her_ until the Haruno woman unintentionally brought it up in the alley only hours ago. The pill I took earlier did nothing, either, to help me; it controlled my mind, bringing it back to rationality and forcing me to less-than-fond memories. I did as much as possible to not recall that woman from when I was young.

I knew now that impossible things such as silent meetings did not exist, souls did not choose one another, and secret gardens died in the winter.

I tried my best not to think about the pink-headed woman as well, but it seemed everything was against my efforts. She slid into the living-room, seven feet away, staring at me the way she usually did.

"You look like hell," I observed aloud, noting her mused hair and smudged makeup. She grimaced at the words, giving me the expression I was searching for- but her nose wrinkled slightly at the base whenever she did that, which was almost a mirror to the faces Mikoto Uchiha would make at me when she didn't like something I said or knew. It was almost too similar for comfort.

"I _feel_ like hell," she gave in silently, reminding me again just how similar she was to Mother. But I could tell she was battling inside herself for the right words to say. Her foot tapped like it usually did when she beat herself up like that. I was sure even she didn't realize it tapping against the old hard-wood floors I had picked out for her.

"Are you okay?" she finally blurted and I couldn't help but sneer at myself for ever relating the Haruno woman to Mother. They were both separated from the barriers I created in my mind- past and present closed from each other forever. At least, that's what I kept trying to tell myself. A flash of rejection passed her eyes and she tried to hide it before I noticed. She didn't want me to know just how much it troubled her that I could brush her off so easily.

What she wanted was obvious. She thought she was being clever in hiding it from me but I knew that her reasoning for staying in Sound was to help me- to gain my trust and eventually find out my reasoning for calling her here. But, that would defeat the purpose. It would defeat the plan, and the plan was more important.

I tried again to formulate. I usually used the time for sleep to plan the next move, but the drug still coursing through my system made it hard to think in my natural way. "No. No, that wouldn't work…" I mumbled to myself after rejecting one method of operation. "I can't seem to plan anything correctly right now…I shouldn't have taken that medication. It screws with my brain." I rubbed my temples, noting her concerned expression. She was too soft and I needed to stop comparing her to a certain other woman- but they had the same hands. "I can't act like I normally do. I act more like _you_." I didn't care to see if she took it as an insult or not before setting my glass on the table and gesturing sternly for her to come closer.

She seemed hesitant at first, but she started forward with little steps eventually; after everything, she still trusted me. Even when I showed her with my actions that she should not- she still did. Her stubbornness was in my benefit, at least. If she knew what I was planning for her, she wouldn't have stayed in Sound so willingly. I probably would have had to force her myself. 'The best way to find out if you can trust someone is to trust them', as Hemmingway once put it, but Sakura seemed to be reasoning something in her head that I could not figure out. I couldn't understand why she must have known this would end badly for her- and it would- but she stayed all the same.

She knew I was calling her to where I was sitting but she stopped three feet away, refusing herself to go any further. I couldn't help the annoyed grunt I lashed toward her, showing her I didn't like her disobedience. So, just for the sake of making her uncomfortable, I pulled the yielding fabric of her dress, forcing her forward until her legs collided with my chair. Her hands were shaking, which I found slightly amusing and half annoying.

When I did nothing but release her dress and place my forehead on her stomach, she let out a relieved breath that was slightly more annoying than her hands.

It was quiet for a moment and her body was tense, slightly pulling away from the chair when her legs locked in defense. My hands found their own way to grasp her small legs, keeping them in the proper place, and the water on my hand from the scotch glass smeared on her weak skin- moved and then forgotten.

The silence was comfortable until she broke it, always awry without some sort of sign from me to let her know not to be afraid. "What's wrong, Sasuke?" her voice was shaky and partly lower. Her small hands wound into my hair- and, so similar again, I was almost able to pretend they were Mother's. "You can tell me," she reassured, her voice was its usual tiny whisper before it was silent. For a moment I thought I was sitting on the scratched wooden floor again with the voice I was forced to never forget.

I was about to get too lost in my head's tricks. "Don't treat me like one of your patients, Doc.," I spat to thicken the distance between myself and the mothering woman so that, hopefully, the connections between Haruno and Mikoto would be gone. I wished the medication would run its course soon, because a voice in the back of my head was starting to whisper that it wasn't the medication that made me think they were so alike. After all, the only thing different about them was Sakura's inability to keep silent and her strange hair. They both had the same strong facial features and small bodies.

"I wasn't trying to. I-" but she cut herself off, trying once more to make sure she said the right thing. I almost hated her for it. If I had not taken that pill, I _would_ have hated her- because the only thing that kept me from sometimes snapping her neck was the fact that her small smile was actually Mother's smile. And the only person I was incapable of injuring was Mother. Mother had made sure of that.

I could almost picture her making that face again, wrinkling the base of her nose so familiarly, and sometimes she made it feel like the impossible possibility of feeling one another from different places could be true once more. At times, she was so like her that I unwillingly remembered how I used to be able to measure how much Mother loved me by just thinking her name.

But the proximity to Sakura did not bring me closer to feeling Mother again and it did nothing to abate the way my mind clung to the hopes that Sakura would do something that reminded me of back then, just to have a reason to pretend that silent words still existed.

Because I was older, I could rationalize that Mother made it all up and made me believe that we had created something wonderful together. But that would bring no good to anything. Acknowledging that humans do not have the ability to transfer thoughts with just a look does nothing but state the obvious fact that Mother was sick, and she didn't even know it. She didn't know that she needed help or that her child would inherit the same disorder. She thought that the reason we were so different from others was because we had our power to create a world where speaking was no longer needed. She never realized that the real reason we were so alike was because we were both fated to the same mental status. And it was the warped state of our minds' continual feeding of each other's- day by day, night by night- that made us actually believe we would know each other, even in death.

But no matter how much I knew it was true, and that Mother's and my world was a place that only existed because of my fanatical need to believe everything she said- the strong beat of Sakura's heart through her stomach made me not want to choose the rational facts over the memory of how it felt to sit and hear the mind of another person. The beating in her stomach caressed my forehead in waves and for a moment I was sure I could hear Mother's voice again and see her smiling at me in our secret garden.

"Can I ask you something?" Sakura broke me out of my mind once more and I let out a grateful sigh, tightening my hands on her legs. I wasn't sure if I would break them by accident. Her hands were shaking in my hair and she clutched them slightly to try and hide it.

"You're too nosy," I admonished lightly, not able to raise my voice at the moment. It was against me.

I could feel the beating in her stomach increase. "Why did you kill your Father?" her voice cracked before she could hold it back. It took me a moment to register what she had uttered and I felt the picture I was creating in my mind shatter. I remembered that I hated her sometimes, and that was enough to make me hate her at that moment. "Sasuke?"

"Get," the harshest tone left my mouth before I knew it had come out and I extracted myself from her with a little too much force. She stumbled slightly, confused by my sudden rough-handling. She couldn't have possibly known how deep her questions bore, but there was nothing else around to take my hatred out upon- and the fear and lonely uncertainty in her eyes was the only thing that kept me from grabbing her fragile neck and squeezing Mother out of her. My hand twitched and I didn't know if I was about to hit her, but the idea was provocative. "Get out," It was all I could do to snarl at her and she turned and ran to her room down the hallway again, locking the door behind her.

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><p><em>I woke up on the wooden floor of my bedroom, feeling like a car accident and wallowing in self-pity; resigned to stay hiding from Sasuke behind my locked door until the apocalypse came. I hoped it was soon because the floor was cold and, even though I knew Sasuke probably hated me now, I wanted him to tell me that there was nothing to be afraid of.<em>

_I watched the shadows from the sun through my window splay across the wooden floor until a loud knock erupted from the door behind me. I scrambled to my feet as fast as humanly possible, trying not to make too much bustle but ended up stubbing my toe on the door frame. "Sasuke-" I began, trying to apologize, before I realized it wasn't him._

"_Brahm?" I tilted my head, confused as to why the guy Sasuke hired was waltzing through our house._

"_Sasuke told me to watch you while he is gone," he explained and walked into the living room, gesturing me to follow._

"_Did he say when he would be back?" I already knew the answer and Brahm's shaking of his head only confirmed it. "Why do you have to watch me?" I whined childishly. I was a grown woman being treated like a twelve year old boy with a new dart-gun. Brahm didn't answer my last question and settled into the same seat against the wall of the living room that Sasuke had been sitting in the night before._

"_I need you to stay out here with me. Sasuke told me to not let you out of my sight," Brahm drawled lazily from the chair, newspaper in hand. "He either thinks you're up to something and is suspicious, or you're valuable enough to his plan for him to make an actual effort to keep someone alive for once."_

"_Do you know what his plan is?" I had to speak louder while in the kitchen, grabbing a hot cup of tea, then returning to the living room and settling myself in a chair a few feet away from Brahm. I hadn't noticed how big he was until now. He took up most of the space around the chair he resided in._

"_Is that the question you really want to ask?" He turned a page of his newspaper, acting as calmly as if we were speaking of the basketball game last Saturday. But I simply nodded, playing possum. "No, I don't know his plan. I'm sure we won't until the end, when we're acting out our parts," he sounded so sure in his words._

"_I know why I am here," Brahm broke the stillness of the air with his raspy voice. "The question is: why are you?"_

"_Huh?"_

"_Do you even know why you are here still?" he quirked an eyebrow, probably thinking me to be more ignorant than he had previously conceived._

"_Because I'm still alive," I tried to answer truthfully, but felt like I was still lying. Either to him or to myself, I wasn't exactly sure._

"_That can't possibly be the only reason." He shook his head and rested his elbow on the small table to his right. It creaked in protest under his heavy weight._

"_Why are _you_ here?" I flipped his question back at him, irritated that he was asking such deeply rooted questions (questions that I forced into my subconscious), and tried not to stick my tongue out at him again._

"_Simple. To help Sasuke achieve his goal while keeping you safe from anyone who might be against him. That's what I'm paid to do. But you already knew that," he shrugged like it wasn't important. "But I am also trying to help you out here…."_

"_From what?" I almost spilled my tea on my lap, fully at attention and hoping to put together more pieces of the puzzle than I had so far._

"_From Sasuke himself," And the words seemed heavy on the cool air of the room._

"_I've resigned myself to the fact that I will probably die soon," I tried to explain but he cut me off, thinking my words to be quite funny for some reason._

"_You might have, which I doubt," I threw him a glare but he continued. "But has _he_?"_

"_That doesn't even make any sense. Sasuke knows the reality of this situation, just like I do. And he also knows that it will most likely be he himself who finishes me off. He's probably known that since the first moment we met…" I felt like I was lying again, but to only myself this time because Brahm certainly didn't buy it._

"_Why are you here, Sakura?" he asked again with more tenor in his probing voice, trying to force my cooperation with the severity of his underlying meaning._

"_I just want to help him. I want him to get what he's searching for so that I- we_- all _of us- won't have to be like this forever; frozen in place, attempting to dislodge the limits that God gives us and trying catch smoke with our bare hands," I found myself whispering. "I want to find out why I _am_ still alive…after everything…." My breathing was becoming shallow and I had to focus on it to make sure it didn't stop completely._

"_It all doesn't fit, does it?" he asked and I knew he was about to say something that I tried to not think about since that day in Dr. Kura's office. I didn't want to be faced with the many things that I needed to solve and sort through, because I had neglected them for so long in the fear that all of my unanswered questions, and the possibility that I might never be able to unlock Sasuke's psyche, would consume and suffocate me when they were finally set free. It had only been nine days since he had left me in that motel room after he had finally killed the Minister, but the magnitude of things left unanswered were spread out before me- so large a sum that I could not even make sense of it. I wasn't sure how much of my overflowing questions and fears my body could take once Brahm spoke my apprehensions aloud and called them to the forefront of my mind. He would inevitably be forcing me to either attempt the impossible task of deducing just _what_ was wrong with the Uchiha, or ignoring the craving in the pit of my stomach that said, 'You're gonna' be slaughtered like all the others if you don't get out of your denial and _do_ something!'_

_(I had thought that the Minister's murder was his only goal and that reaching it would lead to the end of this whole shebang- but it turned out that the Minister and Suna were only stepping stones for the _real_ thing Sasuke was still trying to orchestrate. I had realized in that dusty room on my first night in Sound, while talking to the Uchiha, that the only reason he had left me tied up in that motel room was because the cops were hot on our trail, and leaving me was only to distract them long enough for Sasuke to save his own skin and make it to Sound while they were all preoccupied. He had planned it all on the night he had stayed awake in the motel while I slept, not knowing that that was the night I became an integral part of Sasuke's future intentions. He had planned leaving me to the interrogation of the police, knowing that I would listen to his advice of lying to the cops so that they would not know where he had gone. He knew that doing this would nudge the feds off of his trail, inevitably leading to him being able to resume his actions without the hindrance of potentially being apprehended. Now he could kill in the safe-zone of Sound because the police were deterred and the power of working for the Kage would protect him from being stopped by anyone. And when everything had died down and he called me under that alias to rejoin him in Sound- he _knew_ I would accept. He was counting on his surety that I would, for a reason that I still asked myself, return to him in Sound. Now, all his chips were falling just like he wanted and it was time to let the games begin…. I was ashamed in myself for being so easily manipulated. I was more ashamed, though, that I had thought- for even one sliver of a moment- that maybe he wanted me in Sound because what we had been through together had kept some place in him where he preferred my _company_ over the thought of us going our own separate ways, never to see each other again. At least that, or just the fact that I was better table-company than a dead body! But, instead, I had foolishly let my undeserved faith in him cloud my judgment and guide me back to hell; I was so utterly _blind_ of the whole thing and I had idiotically let my guard down and allowed myself to believe that he could be capable of compassion- even when it went against everything I knew about the psychopathic influence. And now Sasuke had me under his thumb again- the last pawn he needed- and he could put me in whatever position of his plan that he deemed fit, using me in whatever sick, twisted game he was playing at.)_

_Before I could snap out of the revelations I was currently accosting myself with- and before I could tell Brahm that I didn't want to hear what he wanted to say because I was afraid that he would say something that would peak my obsession and force me become even more involved than I already was- he continued. "None of it makes sense because only Sasuke knows the rules; he's the one who's making up the game as we all play along, willingly or unwillingly- and he watches from the shadows. And I'm not trying to make this sound rude but, to tell the truth, he would have saved himself from a lot of trouble if he had just killed you when he killed those guards on the bus. There is something missing that brings the whole thing together, and it's something that, when discovered, will bring the reality of this whole thing crashing down on your head!" I felt like a little girl sitting in a kitchen stool again, being lectured by my parents and being forced to listen because I was smaller and more insignificant._

"_What are you getting at?" I scoffed, trying not to believe his words even though my mind told me they sounded truer than anything I could have convinced myself of._

"_I'm trying to say that Sasuke hasn't killed you yet because he _can't_ kill you," his eyes were wide, like mine- both of us leaning toward each other as if we were children telling a delicious secret. "I have seen you both interact with each other and there is something unspoken, maybe even unknown, that is there- keeping him from slaughtering you in your sleep. Admit it. That's the only reasonable explanation, isn't it?" he knew he was right. And so did I. "The only problem is finding out what it is that keeps him from evoking your death. His plan cannot be fulfilled while you are still alive, which sounds harsh but it is true… The reason he cannot settle on how to end his plan is because he is trying to find a way to obtain his goal while keeping you alive; he is trying not to acknowledge that killing you is the only way he will not be held back. You're the baggage he carries, which can be either a bad or good thing. I am trying to keep you alive, hoping it turns out to be a good thing that he has something (at least one thing) in the world that he cannot destroy. Maybe it will teach him a lesson or two…." He broke off and rubbed the rough hair of his chin in thought. "I'm sure you've noticed how he is slowly advancing himself upon you; and I think he is doing it instinctually- trying to corrupt you and make you more like him, so that he can finally kill you and get rid of whatever it is that is keeping him from doing so." The shadows from the light overhead cast downward upon his face, giving his words more force against me and maybe he didn't even know their lingering effectiveness. "Corrupting you will make it easier to kill you. It will give him a _reason_ to kill you, other than the fact that you are integrated in it all so perfectly…"_

_He seemed happy with his diagnosis of the situation and for a moment he reminded me of myself; the psychologist I had been only weeks before who bit her nails at the chance to understand something formerly believed to be impossible, and never afraid of trying or failing to unlock the secrets in the mind of a patient - always so keen to try and unravel an anomaly. And Sasuke seemed to be the hardest thing for me to unravel, but I had always just guessed that this was because I was too close to the situation (Because everything else that I was trying to unravel was fitted so snugly around his finger and under his total control. To understand everything else, I needed to first unravel _him_). I needed an outer perspective that was able to take a step back and see _every_ angle instead of just my own, and Brahm, at the moment, was that outer perspective I had been missing. He could see and understand everything that I could not because he wasn't constricted by the same position I was. Brahm was not stuck looking at only one possibility like me, so perhaps he could delve into Sasuke's character and actions in a way that I could not._

_Because I had interacted with Sasuke so closely for so long, I was not able to see past my idea that he was nothing more than psychotic. But, in all actuality, there was so much more than my limited idea of him could understand. He wasn't _only_ a psychopath; the only reason I labeled him as one was because I couldn't think of any other word to call him- the things he did definitely leaned towards that specific mental condition but it could also be something in his life that I was not aware of and that aided this disorder. Something that added on to it, and layered upon itself, to make him into the sociopathic phenomenon that he was today. (Something in family or society- maybe even his _own_ debauched mind- not just genetics, that could have molded him ever since he was very young- conditioning him into a natural born killer. Making him into something so disparate from the outside world and forcing him into his own category of personal existence- a person who fed on the hatred and death of humanity, because his human condition was not to be human. It was to be inhumanly separate from anything considered moral or just or right. He was born, or perhaps raised, in a fashion that I did not know- or understand because I could not imagine the kind of life a person must have lived to make them into such a thing- and I, therefore, could not put any reasoning to why Death was his religion- his deity)._

_Was Brahm right? Was there something going on that I was oblivious to and which kept Uchiha Sasuke from grabbing the closest thing to him and blundering me to death? I had always felt that I was a nuisance but didn't realize until just then how strange it really was that I was still alive, and I suppressed a cringe when I was thwarted with how just _wrong_ it was that I was contemplating Sasuke murdering me- and how I did it calmly without even feeling scared or angry that he could, or would, kill me for the sake of a stupid thing like his '_plan'_. I didn't mind it, and that scared me more than Sasuke himself. I frightened myself because I knew that, somehow, Sasuke had gotten into my head; somehow I went from the young psychologist fighting for my own survival in the Suna desert, to the young woman who directly put herself back into the grasp of the very man who she fought against for that same survival. I had become a completely different person because I had known that Sasuke was altering me, corrupting me, but he had done it so quietly that I didn't even notice it happening in order to protect myself form it. I didn't even notice when I altered from trying to preserve my own life to preserving Sasuke's goal instead; and throwing my life away so that a man- one who didn't even care about me in the slightest- could entertain himself by knowing he controlled it all. I had done it because- no matter how foolish or wrong I knew it to be- somewhere down the road I ended up caring about him so much that I would rather put myself at the brunt of the danger than turn my back on him. I couldn't imagine myself anywhere else but in that house, waiting to become useful for once. Also because I may have cared for him, but I was still terrified of him. He terrified me more than the thought of dying, so I chose to take my chances hoping that he would take pity on me rather than denying to help him and him killing me for simple disobedience._

_Just like I realized in the Kage's office, Sasuke didn't need me to help him with anything. He was perfectly capable of handling this all on his own because I didn't have the skill or capacity- not to mention the guts- to do what he did. How could I be of use to him if I wasn't even willing to kill like him? And that thought brought me to my next question: Was that the reason why he was trying to corrupt me? So that it would help me to be used in his plan the way I needed to be used and, therefore, easier for him to let die in the process? Could Sasuke not kill me because I had not done anything, in his opinion, to be deserving of death?_

_I believed I had the answer to that question, at least. I had not seen Sasuke kill anyone who he didn't believe needed to die. Every person I had witnessed him kill was someone whose death aided him in a way that I did not know, but it was still idealistic to the nature of 'the plan'. Every murder, every forth-bringing of their blood, was- in his eyes- a necessary action that brought him further ahead of whoever or whatever he was trying to defeat or obtain. So my other question and mission was to find out what he was after- what or _who_ he was trying so hard to stay a step ahead of._

"_What do you mean by me being "integrated so perfectly"?" I had to ask, knowing I was becoming too suspended in Brahm's words. But it was the only part of his whole explanation that didn't make sense._

"_You seriously haven't noticed?" he laughed but it wasn't crudely, just ironic. I just shook my head, waiting for him to speak more ideas that could possibly help me understand. I was hoping that the more he talked, the more likely a click would sound in my head and then I would understand everything all at once. "Everything that has happened has revolved around the one fact that you are connected to everything," he spoke slowly like he was drilling it into my head. "You worked in the asylum, you had a high position on the 'Board of Psychologists', you were a person who could have been easily thrown away if something unexpected occurred or you could have been used as a very important hostage if the police had been faster than planned," My stomach was starting to lurch and I hoped his list of reasons was short enough to end before I puked, but be kept on going until I was dizzy. "You were able to distract attention when the time came to kill the Minister, you were there to help dispose of the bodies quickly and save valuable time, he was able to use you to stall the police and make it to Sound without hindrance, you were the person who obeyed his beck-and-call when he told you to come to Sound, and _now_ you are the one left standing; the one who holds everything in one strand. If you two had not been able to get into the party in Suna where the Minister was, Sasuke could have given your name to the owner as a last resort to get in, then he could have killed you to preserve evidence of him ever being there. You were involved in everything that happened, so I'm guessing he called you back because your usefulness isn't at an end…yet." His eyes, which were bright at the beginning of the conversation, now looked to me with nothing but pity and maybe even a little awe as to why Sasuke chose someone like me to be the most important pawn._

"_Wh-" my voice was raspy and I had to clear the lump in my throat. "What should I do?"_

"_Why are you asking me?" his voice was back to its normal volume, as if we were having a usual conversation, but it seemed so loud compared to our previous whispering that it startled me back into my seat._

_I almost choked on my disbelief. "Because you're the one who clearly thinks he has all the answers!" I accused, pointing a finger in his face. He simply ignored it and picked up his newspaper once more, turning the conversation back to regular, unemotional talk. I sat back down, feeling as if all the energy in my body simply evaporated into the ceiling. "Just tell me what to do," I pleaded. It was something in my voice that caused him to look over his paper to me, acknowledging my position in our agreement._

"_You can either let him use and eventually kill you, or corrupt you," he said shortly. "That will be the only way you can help him because staying frozen in this position does nobody any good… We are all waiting for the plan to be completed, even if we are not aware of it. We can feel it coming, but we don't know why it is taking so long," He gave me a look like it was my fault for the plan's delay and then licked his finger and turned the page, finding something written in the sports section slightly concerning. "Either that, or you can choose to live and save me a lot of trouble," He pretended to think really hard about something for a moment before speaking again and I realized that the whole reason he brought up the whole thing in the first place was for the specific purpose of making me understand that I had to make the choice. Nothing would move forward until I made the choice; everything was standing still because I had given up on the possibility of surviving without even _trying_. "If you die, Sasuke gets what he desires. But if you live he keeps the last sliver of his humanity, which I think he wants more than whatever he is planning for- he just doesn't realize it yet." I couldn't help but smile at the ridiculousness of it all and I could tell Brahm knew I finally understood._

"_I'd like to live," I sighed and rested back to my now cold tea._

"_I like that idea as well." He agreed and the tension in the room lifted more with each breath we took thereafter._

_But, I couldn't rule out the fact that Brahm and I could be completely wrong in our suspicions. One thing I learned in the last two or so weeks was: when you think you figured out what Sasuke is up to, you are dead wrong. Brahm had a convincing argument- an argument that I even believed could be the right one- but whenever I thought about everything the Uchiha had ever said to me or every other moment we had known each other, I could not imagine him ever standing above me with the intention of hurting me. Even seeing first-hand how ruthless and practically _inhuman_ he could be, I could not fathom the same man that had danced with me- the same man I had almost kissed- as the person who was plotting my downfall. I could pick anything that the Uchiha had ever said to me, and I would never find a hint of anything but amusing humor (mostly at my expense for his entertainment) or the slight way he would tell me something to make me think it was an order, but he would still look to me to make sure I agreed anyway. Or how he would tell me things when he thought I wasn't listening, like when he spoke about his mother in the alley. Or how when he stood in front of Gonzo to shield me from the gun, it was not for preserving me in his plan. If it was for the sake of the plan, he would not have put his own life in danger to save mine because I was easily replaceable, but he was not._

_I was at a stand-still between my suspicions and what I wanted to be true. And I wanted it to be true so bad that it literally hurt to turn away from the hope that this could all be wrong and Sasuke could be keeping me alive because he had developed _some_ kind of emotion toward me other than dominance._

"_How did you get so smart, Brahm?" I teased and he did nothing but say that his job was to sit back and watch. 'You learn things by watching and, after so long, you begin to see things that don't seem to really be there,' he had explained and I had said he sounded a lot like Sasuke. We both laughed at that._

"_I'm going to have to still play along, pretending I am only here for the psychological experience," I dead-panned, placing the back of my hand to my forehead as if I were completely doomed- which was how I truly felt but I wouldn't tell Brahm that._

_Brahm had a different idea and tossed his wrinkled paper to the small table but it sailed with the air to the floor instead, hovering for a moment above the wood before settling. "How long has it been since he-" he made a crude hand-gesture that I didn't have the guts to think about the meaning of. "He is a guy after all," He shrugged, laughing to himself and his disturbing humor, as if his being a guy meant that the entire solution was some kind of guttural 'adult-sleepover'._

"_Sasuke is mentally-warped, not sexually-deprived," I tried to hide my horror at his sexual-innuendo. The man had no conviction and I didn't want to admit that I had entertained the thought for even a moment._

"_Now, Sakura," he held up a lecturing finger and shook it at me. "Don't they both go hand in hand?"_

_I stood up as fast as I could, scoffing repeatedly and sputtering, red-faced, for something to say. "I- you…Doing _that_ wouldn't change anything! It doesn't even have anything to do with what we were just talking about!"_

"_Doesn't it?" he pressured with a cheesy grin at my expression, wagging his eyebrows in a way that was too familiar for comfort._

"_You two are just alike! You're no better than _him_!" I squawked, huffing and puffing my way to the complete other side of the room and secluding myself to a sofa by the bookcases._

Brahm was still on the other side, laughing as loudly as humanly possible, when Sasuke entered through the front porch with a questioning and amused tilt of the head, slamming the door behind him and waking me from my dream.

I was still on the same floor in front of by bedroom door, just like in the dream, and the house was too quiet to be comfortable. The sun was pinning through my windows and splaying on the floor the same way as well.

I tried to think about only the important parts of my dream, like the _relevant_ fraction of my conversation with Brahm- and I figured that it was my subconscious, yelling at me to take the warnings seriously. It was everything I had shoved in the back of my mind and it had collected itself enough to finally surface and tell me what I secretly believed was happening.

But the more I tried to focus on the important parts, the more I kept wondering why my subconscious would make Brahm suggest that Sasuke's problem was sexual frustration. Even while I showered, I spent fifteen minutes just standing under the water and running that part over and over through my head. And I couldn't stop myself after that from picturing it, then wondering idly if Sasuke was good in bed.

Dream-Brahm's last words infected my mind, making it almost impossible for any coherent thought, other than my humiliating curiosity of Sasuke's sex-life, to form. All that kept running through my mind was why (in the dream) I had even entertained the thought in the first place, and why I couldn't seem to think about anything other than how perverted I must be for dreaming such a thing. And I wanted to laugh at the ridiculousness of it all, but I was just nervous that the next time I saw Sasuke I might accidentally picture him naked.

And, one more thing: I wasn't sure how- or even why- but I had never realized until that point just how much I stared at his ass or why I constantly noticed how broad his shoulders were.

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><p><strong>Part III will be coming soon. Please review and tell me what you thought of Part I and II...<strong>


	8. Natural Born Killers Part III

I added the new chapter of _Natural Born Killers Part III_ onto the new story since i won't be posting it on this drabble anymore so go check it out!


	9. Colors

I do not own Naruto

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><p>Colors<p>

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><p>All he could see was colors. When he looked away, it was pink and green. And when he slept, pink and green we're there. And lately it seemed that all he knew was pink and green.<p>

The woman made of colors next to him heaved a sigh, her light lips parting and neck exposing itself as she rested her chin on her palm. Her skin, so fair that he wondered how the sun was not burning her, had colors hidden there; deep in the skin where he wasn't sure if he was imagining it or just looking too closely. But beneath that very skin there was life, flowing in rich colors through her veins and making the skin of her neck pulse.

Then the wretched, dark thoughts came barreling, causing him to wonder how it would make him feel to quell that blood. To stop it from flowing and drain the colors from her skin- to watch her blow away, all pink and green and un-moving. He almost found his hand move to splay across that tiny throat, just so he could feel every pulse of red beneath his fingers. But he grasped his traitorous hand before it could lift and hid it in his pocket.

He glanced again in her direction to be sure she had not noticed his unusual behavior- she was sometimes too observant for her own good. But she was still sighing in boredom and staring into the distance, across the dirt road into the forest on the other side. Kakashi and Naruto had left to the village nearby for supplies, Sakura and himself staying behind to wait for their target to come down the commonly used trail. They currently resided behind a line of bushes a few feet from the road, her crouching with a forlorn expression while she thought; and him squatting against the base of a tree close by, facing her direction and resting his elbows on his bent knees.

The leaves were green with summer health and the sky pink with approaching nightfall. "We should head to the village and meet up with the others. It'll be dark soon." He spoke, watching her ears perk at his voice interrupting the birdsong of the deep woods. He hoped for her to agree and come along. He hoped to save her from himself; the longer they stayed out there, the more likely an accident were to happen; and he wouldn't know how to explain to Naruto and Kakashi the reasoning behind why she had not returned with him.

She flicked a bug off her knuckle and nodded, standing lithly and stretching her neck from side to side. For a moment, and no longer than a moment, her hair parted by the juncture of her shoulder when she made the movement, causing that pulsing skin to bravely show itself again. And once more there came the strong and dreadful desire to throttle her- to squeeze that very skin and watch a struggle.

His fingers twitched, ears roaring so frighteningly loud that he almost couldn't hear her reply. "I guess so." Her pink tongue moved against the roof of her mouth as he watched.

'_Just do it_.' A voice whispered delightfully in his mind. '_Just do it_.' But he tried to resist. He tried, so very hard.

Her eyes were of color; green staring at him and pink lips tugging into an unknowing smile. And he was over-thwarted with a luscious desire to end her. '_Just do it._..' For another moment that was all he could do. He step toward her, his hand removing itself from it's pocket and extending toward her as she turned away from him to walk back the way they had come.

He wasn't sure if she would fight him off or simply lie there, but he was sure that either way he was the stronger one. He always had been, even with all her growth in his long absence from the village. But he had returned, and ever since he has been surrounded by the same pink and green that drives his thoughts to dark, mysterious places.

He suddenly wondered why Kakashi and Naruto had trusted them to be alone together, so far from home. How could they be positive he wouldn't kill her, just so he could be rid of these colors? How did they still not know him enough to realize that it would only be so simple for him to kill her, just like he had tried to many other times before his return?

Just when he was close enough to almost touch the offendingly pallored skin, she turned to speak again, making him pull the hand away. "I know I haven't said it yet, but i'm glad you're home, Sasuke." That same, sickening smile of pink widened and the green brightened in her eyes. "We all are. And now things will get better. I promise."

'_Just do it_.'

"How can you be sure?" he clenched his hands to keep them at bay. He fought it. He did. "Why will things get better?"

She looked at him with colors, as if he should already know. "Because they have to, Sasuke." And that was it. She walked away and he decided that her answer was enough to save her for the time being.

He closed his eyes to colors. "Pink and green." He mumbled, so often lately that it was almost a prayer, and moved to catch up with her retreating form in the distance.

And he hoped the thoughts would keep away long enough not to harm her. Because if they didn't, he would have to leave again. And this time he wouldn't let himself come back.

'_Do it...'_


End file.
